Summer's Awakening

by Anne Weale

  Her mouth softened under his, her body yielded, she clung.

  When, some time later, he stopped kissing her but continued to hold her in his arms, she opened her eyes and found him looking down at her flushed cheeks and parted lips with an intent, frowning expression.

  After a moment or two he stood up, lifting her with him and putting her back on her feet.

  'Much as I'd like to continue this, I think, with Emily to consider, it's better we don't complicate things, do you agree?' he asked briskly.

  She had never wanted anything more than to resume their embrace, to press herself closely against him and feel those strong arms closing round her, that hard mouth softening on hers.

  But she forced herself to say, 'Much better.'

  Whatever wayward impulse had prompted him to kiss her, she knew it was not a kiss to be taken seriously. There was nothing she could do but pretend it had meant as little to her as it had to him.

  The next morning he flew to Chicago, leaving Emily downcast and Summer free to continue seeing Raoul without their meetings being monitored.

  Later that day she had a jubilant call from the owner of the shop on Madison Avenue to tell her that one of the belts had caught the eye of Vogue's accessories editor and was going to be shown in a future issue of the glossy, with a credit for her and for the shop. All the other belts had sold. How soon could she deliver another consignment?

  Summer would have liked to discuss this development with Raoul but she hesitated to call him. She didn't want him to think her pushy. She would wait for him to call her.

  It was almost a week before she heard from him. Meanwhile she burned a good deal of midnight oil finishing the evening bag and beginning a wrist-band to match the belt bought by his sister. It was to be a gesture of appreciation for the setting he had made for her.

  She was studying one of the books he had lent her when he called.

  'I wondered, if you're free this evening, if you and Emily would like to come and see my apartment and try my speciality—kidneys à la brochette?' he suggested.

  'We'd love to, Raoul.'

  That the invitation included Emily increased her liking for him. Obviously he realised that she wouldn't have wanted to go to his apartment on her own till they had known each other longer; and perhaps he also discerned that by now she and the younger girl were virtually sisters.

  He gave her his address and suggested they arrive at seven.

  Although he had said that his apartment was smaller than James's, as soon as they stepped out of the cab at his address she could tell by the elegant canopy from the edge of the sidewalk to the entrance, and by the liveried doorman waiting to usher them inside, that the block where Raoul lived was as exclusive as theirs.

  He had told them not to dress up and Emily was wearing her favourite pale blue corduroy pants embroidered with green frogs, and a blue Shetland sweater over a blue turtleneck. Summer was dressed in the same way except that her pants were plain cream corduroy worn with a boy's cream cable-knit tennis pullover and a shirt. The shirt was navy to match the stripe around the waist and cuffs of the pullover.

  When Raoul opened the door he had a butcher's apron over jeans and a plaid shirt with the collar open and the cuffs turned back. The hair on his forearms was so fair as to be almost invisible. His skin seemed very white by comparison with James's teak tan or even with their lighter tans. But it was a time of year when most people in Manhattan were pale after months with little sunshine.

  That he shook hands with them both, before taking their coats, was, she thought, the Frenchman surfacing. An American's greeting would have been more casual, and it was unlikely that an American would have kissed her hand with the accustomed ease with which he had performed that delightful gesture the last time she saw him.

  'We're eating in the kitchen,' he told them. 'But we'll have a drink in here first'—showing them into his living room. 'What can I get you?'

  Summer asked for a soda water, Emily for Coke. Then, while he was getting their drinks, they looked with interest at their surroundings.

  The most striking feature of the room was a huge modern painting of a choppy sea flecked with white horses under a sky of broken clouds.

  Although he was busy putting ice into tall glasses, and not watching them, Raoul said, 'The picture is by Bonade.'

  Clearly all his visitors looked at the painting before anything else.

  The white clouds and foam, and the blue sky reflected in the tossing water, had been used as a theme for the room's décor. Most of the furniture was white, but one sofa was covered in blue linen and the white curtains had blue borders.

  The room was recognisably designer-decorated. As Summer was wondering who had done it, he said, 'I used to have a girl-friend who was an interior designer. She decorated the apartment for me.'

  And lived in it with him for a while, Summer concluded, remembering what James had told her about him. She wondered why they had split up.

  While Emily made a bee-line for his bookshelves, Summer was drawn to the corner with a large sloped drawing table and a wall panelled with cork to which he had pinned numerous clippings, sketches, swatches of fabric and other references.

  On the table was an intricate drawing of a necklace, obviously inspired by the photograph, pinned beside it, of a spider's web beaded with dew and glistening in sunlight.

  Raoul took Emily's Coke to her, then brought Summer's drink and his own—a glass of red wine— to his working area.

  'That's a design for platinum and diamonds,' he told her. 'Those very delicate links and claws wouldn't be feasible in gold. Platinum is the perfect setting for diamonds—if they're set in gold they pick up yellow from the metal—and also the most secure one because of its hardness and strength.'

  'It's beautiful, Raoul. Will you make it yourself?'

  'No, I don't have the time. Platinum takes longer to polish than gold. That's one of the reasons, apart from its rarity and purity, why it's so expensive. Eighteen carat gold is only about seventy per cent pure. Platinum is ninety-five per cent pure. I'd like to make this necklace, but I have too much administrative responsibility to be able to craft all my designs. Nor do I have the skills. I know the theory of diamond cutting, but I'm not capable of putting it into practice.'

  They had supper sitting on tall stools round the breakfast bar in his pine-walled kitchen.

  'How come you're such a good cook?' Summer asked, as they ate lambs' kidneys wrapped in bacon and broiled on skewers, with baked potatoes and sour cream, and a side salad redolent of garlic.

  'I'm not. I can cook three things—a steak, an omelette and these. Do you like to cook?'

  'Yes. I cook on Victoria's night off. You must come and try my chicken with apples and brandy.'

  In place of dessert he served cheese and fruit. Summer had a thin sliver of Roquefort and a pear which she cut into pieces and ate very slowly. The eating habits of a slim person were becoming second nature to her.

  For coffee, they returned to the sitting room where Emily was happy to continue looking at Raoul's books while her elders talked about jewellery.

  At ten o'clock they went home after a relaxed, happy evening which was the forerunner of many pleasant threesomes.

  In the following week or two, Raoul introduced them to many aspects of New York which they might not have discovered without him. He took them to a performance of the dance division of the Juillard School, a hot-bed for future stars in all the performing arts. He took them to the Amato Opera Theater down in the Bowery to hear singers who might one day be stars at the Metropolitan Opera Company; and he took them to the Met itself although, at the time, they had no idea that orchestra seats were hard to come by and very expensive.

  The night José and Victoria went to visit his brother in Queens, and Summer cooked her pièce de résistance, was the night James reappeared.

  Emily and Raoul were playing backgammon in the living room and she was busy in the kitchen when she was startled by a buzzer.
Looking up at the indicator panel above the kitchen door, she saw that the summons came from the lobby and knew instantly that James had come home and was ringing for José.

  Her immediate reaction was dismay that he should have chosen tonight to descend on them. Leaving her preparations, she went out of the kitchen and along the short passage beyond which was the lobby.

  Mustering a polite smile, she greeted him with, 'You picked the wrong night to come home. Victoria's out and I'm deputising as cook.'

  He smiled at her. 'Hello, Summer. How are you?'

  'Fine, thanks. How are you?'

  'In need of a shower and a pick-me-up. It's been one of those days.'

  He was unbuttoning his coat. For the first time since she had known him, he looked tired and rather drawn.

  'Let me take your coat.' She moved round behind him.

  'Thanks.'

  'I'm afraid we have a guest to supper. We weren't expecting you, and—'

  'No need to apologise. Who is it?'

  'Raoul Santerre. He took us to hear Placido Domingo at the Met last week and this is by way of a return.

  Whatever comment he might have made was forestalled by the doorbell, heralding the arrival of one of the porters with his baggage. This was a sound which could be heard in the living room even though tonight the double doors were closed. As Summer was putting his coat on a hanger in the closet and he was opening the outer door, Emily appeared.

  'James!' Her face lit up.

  She flung herself into his arms for a hug. As he looked down at her, Summer saw his hard, cynical face take on the softer expression and the look of indulgent affection which was his invariable reaction to the sight, after an absence, of his niece's fiery red mop and ear-to-ear beam.

  'You're just in time for a gourmet dinner cooked by Summer,' she told him.

  'So I hear.' He thanked the porter for bringing up his suitcase and hanging bag, closed the outer door and said to Summer, 'Am I going to ruin the soufflé if I take a quick shower first?'

  She said, 'Dinner won't be ready for half an hour yet, and there's nothing to spoil if I have to hold it back longer. Why don't you have a hot tub with a whisky sour or a daiquiri?'

  She knew there was a hot tub in his bathroom because sometimes, when he was away, she and Emily used it. The first time she had seen his Manhattan bathroom, she had been amazed. It had trees growing in it; and a wall of mirror-glass which reflected the fabulous view from the huge floor-to-ceiling window; and a trapeze like the one which the butler had told her James had rigged in an attic at Cranmere.

  'I'll do that,' he agreed. 'I'll be exactly twenty-five minutes.'

  She went back to the kitchen where she had been making the sauce for curried eggs. She had already shelled the lightly boiled eggs and chopped the chives to sprinkle over the curry sauce. The Chicken Normandy was cooking in a casserole in the stove and she was going to steam the vegetables while they were eating the first course.

  As she was piping mashed potato on to a baking tray, Emily came in followed by Raoul.

  'James wants champagne. Raoul is going to open it for us.'

  She showed him the special insulated and temperature-controlled cupboard in which there was always a selection of the best champagnes, including the rare still champagne known as vin nature.

  'Her uncle is a man who knows how to enjoy his fortune,' said Raoul when, after he had poured some champagne for Summer and himself, and half a glass for Emily, she had gone off to take the bottle and an empty glass to James. 'He's not, like many of our customers, a man with more money than taste.'

  She was about to reply that James came from a family which had been rich for centuries when she thought better of it, and said only, 'No, he's very discriminating.'

  He watched her finish piping the Duchess potatoes.

  'I can see you enjoy doing that. You don't despise the domestic arts?'

  'Oh, no—I like them. I'd love to have a place of my own, which I could furnish and where I could give dinner parties.'

  'My friend, Louise, who decorated my apartment, wasn't domesticated. She was very good at her profession and always beautifully dressed, but she couldn't cook and she didn't want to have children,' he said, contemplating his glass with a sombre expression.

  'Are you still in love with her, Raoul?' she asked gently.

  Somehow she felt it was all right to ask him a question she would never have dared to put to James, had it arisen.

  He looked up. 'No—no, I'm not. I was in love with her, but not any more. It was mostly sex between us, and that isn't enough for a marriage which is going to last. My attitude to marriage is French, not American. I'm not a practising Catholic, but I don't believe in divorce. Marriage should be for life. Do you agree?'

  'I'd like my marriage to be for life.' She put the tray of potato rosettes in the oven to set for a few minutes while she beat an egg to brush over them.

  'Have you ever loved a man, Summer?'

  Avoiding a direct answer, she said, 'I feel there's plenty of time. I'd like to achieve something on my own account before I settle down to being Mrs John Doe—although designing should mesh with marriage better than some careers.'

  As she slipped her hands into the pockets of a double oven mitt, preparatory to taking out the baking tray after another minute or two, he came round to her side of the work-island and said, 'I think you're going to make someone a very happy man.'

  And then he tipped up her chin and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  'Oh... sorry!'

  Sweeping through the swing door, Emily saw what was happening and hurriedly backed out.

  Inwardly, Summer groaned. She didn't mind Emily seeing Raoul kissing her, but she didn't want James to be told and, sooner or later, Emily always told him everything.

  She said, smiling, 'You're distracting me from my duties. I think you'd better go back to the living room or dinner may wind up a burnt offering.'

  An answering smile in his blue eyes, he said, 'Okay, I'll get out of your way.'

  James was in the living room with the others when she summoned them to the dining table. The worn look had gone. He looked refreshed and revitalised.

  The dinner was a success. The curried eggs, which she served in white bowls on green cabbage-leaf saucers, looked attractive in their orange-coloured sauce with a sprinkling of dark green chives, and the yolks were just as they should be, still slightly fluid.

  The Chicken Normandy, cooked with smoked bacon, apples and New England applejack in place of Calvados, the French apple brandy specified by the recipe, was eaten with relish by everyone.

  To complete the meal she had assembled an interesting cheese board, the cheeses bought at Zabar's, a West Side delicatessen recommended by Raoul, which had also supplied the French bread.

  'That was a splendid meal, Summer. I must make sure I always come home on Victoria's night off,' said James, leaning back in his chair at the head of the table.

  'Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it.'

  Emily helped her to clear the table and load the dishes in the dishwasher.

  While Summer was making coffee, Emily said, 'I'm sorry I barged in at the wrong moment.'

  'You didn't,' Summer said lightly.

  She would have liked to add, But I'd rather you didn't mention to James that Raoul kissed me.

  But then Emily would want to know why, and that was something she couldn't explain, except by saying that James might tease her, which was only one of the reasons she didn't want him to know she and Raoul were now on kissing terms.

  The two men were drinking Armagnac and talking politics when they joined them.

  'We haven't finished our game of backgammon, Emily,' said Raoul.

  The two of them moved away to the backgammon table, leaving Summer to pour out the coffee while James went to choose some music.

  The tape he selected began with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing Sei Nicht Bos from Der Obersteiger. As the lovely soprano voice began the song of an ambitious gi
rl rejecting the courtship of a young fisherman—'Don't be cross, it can never be. God bless you and don't forget me'—he relaxed his long frame in a comfortable chair.

  Taking a cup of coffee to him, she wondered what kind of relationship he had with Loretta Fox that it wasn't to her apartment that he went for relaxation at the end of a gruelling trip.

  Perhaps she was like Raoul's ex-girl-friend, primarily a careerist who had no use for traditional male and female roles. Maybe she never wanted to lean on his shoulder, or sometimes to cosset him.

  But what kind of woman never needed to feel taken care of by a strong, protective, dominant male? And what kind of man, however powerful in his public life, never wanted, in private, to have an adoring female waiting on him? It must be an arid relationship which excluded those elements of human nature and confined itself to sex, she reflected.

  Having beaten Raoul at backgammon, Emily said, 'You haven't told James your most exciting news, Summer.' She perched on the arm of his chair. 'One of her belts is going to be featured in Vogue.'

  'Really? Congratulations, Summer.'

  He sounded genuinely impressed, but she was conscious that it must seem a trifling achievement to a man who had made the name Oz a household word.

  Later that night, lying awake, she wondered what, if any, significance to attach to Raoul's kiss before dinner. Had it, like James's kiss, been merely an impulse? Or a sign Raoul felt they were two of a kind who might one day become more than friends?

  Another Frenchman, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, had written: Love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

  With Raoul that would be possible. They had so much in common. Perhaps it had been destiny which had brought them together at the Bernier lecture. Perhaps he was the man who could cure her of her ill-advised love for James.

  James's cottage on Nantucket was a spring and fall retreat rather than a summer place.

  In winter not many people other than the hardy Nantucketers stayed on the flat, windswept island thirty miles south of Cape Cod. In high summer it swarmed with tourists. Only between those seasons was it at its best; and its peak of perfection were warm, cloudless days in late spring when all the fine old trees and well-kept gardens in the town surrounding the port were in fresh green leaf, and the white picket fences and the white window trims on the old grey-shingled houses built by whaling captains, and others who had prospered in the island's first heyday, were bright with fresh paint as the islanders prepared to receive the summer people.