Summertime

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I thought it did not seem quite right,’ Lewis stammered, looking suddenly to Trilby more like a boy than a man. ‘I know. I must say, I did think, I thought – it’s a bit of a mess.’

  The wind whipped through the small patch of sand that surrounded the beach hut, and reversing back sprayed sand into everything as Trilby joined Micklethwaite, staring into the tea cup for all the world as though they were both gypsies reading fortunes. As Micklethwaite had said, there was liquid in the cup, milky water, and there were tea leaves floating at the top.

  ‘Perhaps I should have put it in a pot? Yes, I think that is what I should have done, put it in a pot and then stirred, is that it?’

  Lewis started to laugh at himself now, which was just as well since everyone was laughing at him, but as Micklethwaite stopped laughing he caught sight of the look in his employer’s eyes, and it seemed to him that Lewis was not really finding the situation at all funny.

  ‘We should never have taken on making the tea,’ he muttered, as Trilby stepped forward and, having given him a sympathetic look, took charge. ‘I said it would be a disaster, if we made the tea.’

  ‘Have you never made a cup of tea before, sir?’

  ‘Never had cause to,’ Lewis told him, turning away. ‘Why should I keep dogs and bark myself? You know how it is, Micklethwaite. I was always pampered as a child, and now, well, now there is no time for such things. You know how it is,’ he ended lamely.

  With anyone else David Micklethwaite would have put out an arm and placed it round his shoulders, but since it was Lewis James, and he was his employer, Micklethwaite merely remarked in a kindly tone, ‘The rule of thumb with tea and coffee, sir, is that the tea or coffee goes in first, and the water, having boiled, goes in second.’

  ‘And I would like to go in soon.’ Lewis sighed, but because the red patch on his forehead had died away Micklethwaite only nodded in an acquiescent, unhurried manner while staring out to sea in a diplomatic fashion.

  ‘Quite right, sir, we have had the best of the afternoon, but now the ladies have gone to the trouble of making tea for us, I think we should at least join them for that, don’t you, sir?’

  They turned towards the hut which the women had now organised for tea, placing small chairs around a picnic table, and spreading buttered bread with Marmite or jam, and as they did so it seemed to Lewis, throwing a petulant stone towards the incoming sea, that, of a sudden, Micklethwaite really got on his nerves.

  He was so dull, always saying ‘sir’, more of a creep that a right-hand man. Now Lewis came to think about it he really thought that when they returned to London he might send Micklethwaite to America on some mission or other. He thought he might be quite tired of taking Micklethwaite around all the time. Of course Lewis knew how to make tea, he had just been confused that was all. It was ridiculous to be inside a beach hut sipping tea from plastic mugs when he could be drinking martinis or Italian coffee on the deck of his own private yacht. What was more, judging from the way the stepmother had downed her lunchtime martini she would very probably have been more impressed and gratified by a week on his yacht than footling about on an English beach with the wind blowing sand into the bread and butter.

  ‘There really is nothing quite like British beach hols, is there, Mr James?’ All of a sudden Agnes smiled across at David Micklethwaite and Lewis. ‘What fun it has been today, wouldn’t you say? More fun than I care to remember. Like a day before the war, like a day when I was a child, all fun and merriment, tea and sandwiches, sand in the butter. Dear me, takes us all back, doesn’t it?’

  Lewis too smiled, and a second later he had quite forgotten that Micklethwaite was getting on his nerves. ‘Yes, it is quite my favourite sort of holiday,’ he agreed, lying. ‘Quite my favourite.’

  Agnes nodded, at ease with herself for once. She thought she could grow to like a chap who did not mind being teased, who enjoyed his beach holidays like a good Englishman. More than that, she realised that Trilby might be right: despite being so rich and powerful Lewis James was quite able to come off it. After all he had joined in the laughter against himself, hadn’t he? He had generally mucked in. He therefore surely could not be quite such a mogul as she had first thought. Not that it mattered really, not to her, whom Trilby married, it was only Michael who disapproved really, but then Michael would. When all was said and done there was no doubting the fact that he was wild about Trilby.

  Agnes looked thoughtfully over at Lewis. He might, after all, be very useful to her, and to Michael. She had no real idea how he could be useful, but she had a feeling that no man as rich and powerful as Lewis James could not be useful, in some way or another. And then, too, he was handsome, he was stylish, he was solicitous – always asking Agnes if she was quite comfortable, seeing to her needs at every turn, that kind of thing.

  No, all in all, it seemed to her that provided this Lewis James man did not reveal something appalling about himself, she might now consider telling Michael to come round to the idea, and give his consent to whatever it was that Lewis had in mind for Trilby and her future.

  Always providing it was marriage, of course. Michael would never consent to anything else. The Smythsons never lived in sin. It had never been known. She smiled across at Lewis, who had just come back from a short walk along the beach with David Micklethwaite, who was now smiling down at Agnes. She smiled brilliantly back at him. Happy for once, and in her own way even carefree.

  ‘Seduce the stepmother – she is quite a beauty, after all, David,’ Lewis had said, impatient as ever. ‘I can’t stand another day of this sand and Marmite nonsense, just seduce the wretched woman for God’s sake. Judging from the way that she keeps looking at you she’s obviously dying for it, and that will soon put an end to her stupid objections.’

  ‘I can’t do that, sir.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Well, you know how it is, we know so many of the same people!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Micklethwaite, whenever has that ever stopped you before?’

  Chapter Three

  For luncheon that day Trilby wore the latest Chanel navy blue suit with square, slightly padded shoulders, comfortable uncinched waistband, and a sailor hat. A white shirt with bow tie and a gardenia in her buttonhole completed her new look. She felt at ease, happy, and satisfied that she looked as she should for such a smart place as the Caprice.

  Of course everyone smiled at Lewis and Trilby as they moved down the restaurant. Despite their engagement’s having been announced some few weeks before, and the wedding’s being about to follow some few weeks later, the whole of London had stayed interested in this particular couple, one of whom had, in the best tradition, youth and beauty, and the other of whom had not just power and wealth but, most unusually, the good looks and charisma to go with them.

  ‘Agnes says it’s bad luck for the bridegroom to see the dress before the wedding day, and that Hartnell is far too expensive and swanky for a girl of my age.’

  As far as Lewis was concerned, Agnes, having been duly seduced over large brandies and a great deal of sympathy by David Micklethwaite, was now yesterday’s fish. In fact any mention of her name nowadays was beginning to grate on his pre-wedding nerves, but he managed to smile and look interested nevertheless.

  ‘I have, in the past, invested enough money in the house of Hartnell to give me a quite different angle on the story.’ Lewis raised his glass of ice cold champagne to Trilby, and she raised hers to him, and smiled.

  ‘Of course, all your other women, you took them all to Hartnell, didn’t you? Whereas I myself actually prefer Chanel,’ she added, impishly.

  ‘Besides,’ Lewis went on, ignoring her, ‘your stepmother must know that the paper has first call on the design of the dress. They are, technically speaking, paying for it. My fashion editors must therefore advise. Let’s face it, darling, if it was left to your parents you would be marrying me in a utility suit holding a bunch of daisies from the park.’

  Trilby laugh
ed. It was all too true. Inevitably Michael and Agnes both did still have a wartime complex.

  ‘If I explain to you what I think you should look like, if you don’t mind, and after that I will leave all the rest up to Marion Holton.’

  Trilby frowned, not knowing who ‘Marion Holton’ was, and why she should be handed over to her.

  ‘Marion Holton is the real name of Lauren Ashton, our so-famous fashion writer.’

  ‘Oh, good, that is a good idea. What do you think I should wear? Mrs Johnson Johnson says that left to themselves men only want to see women in black stockings and suspenders. Do you think that is what you would like?’

  Lewis laughed. He felt quite able to laugh, for he had already instructed Miss Holton on exactly what he expected his bride to look like, and black stockings and suspenders were definitely not on the menu, at least not until the honeymoon. More than that, detailed sketches of every single item in his bride’s trousseau had been handed over to Marion with precise instructions.

  When she saw them Marion had thought, Gracious, a bit old-fashioned, aren’t they? while saying out loud, ‘Yes, yes, of course, Mr James, I will have all these copied for your bride.’

  It went unsaid, but they both knew of course that if Marion wanted to stay on as Lauren Ashton the columnist she would make utterly sure that everything was done as her employer wished, even if, privately, she thought his taste must have petrified some few years before, as it so often did with men, with Dior and the New Look, or even before that.

  Marion Holton chain-smoked, but not in the salon, of course. In the salon of the house of Hartnell she behaved herself. Trilby could not believe, looking as she did, so unlike the photograph at the top of her Sunday fashion column, that Miss Holton would have any taste at all. However, within a few minutes of their meeting Trilby quickly came to realise just why it was that Marion was the most feared fashion editor in England.

  Miss Holton had taste from the top of her tangerine-coloured hat to the bottom of her polished Rayne shoes. She was It as far as England’s fashion trade went, and although she could never have any influence with the house of Hartnell, she could, when all was said and done, create yet more interest.

  If the future Mrs Lewis James was married in a Hartnell dress it would certainly attract enough press interest, even for Norman Hartnell, to keep his adoring clientele bubbling along in the happy conviction that they were buying their evening gowns and wedding dresses from the right place.

  ‘Nothing white, nothing tulle,’ Miss Holton had stated in the taxi on the way to the salon, quoting her employer, and Trilby had agreed. ‘Something cream, satin, stately, just a hint of the Coronation dresses they did last year. But not so intricate, you understand.’

  She was still quoting Lewis James chapter and verse, but she knew that Trilby would not know this. As a matter of fact, looking at the young, slender girl seated beside her with her large dark eyes and short dark hair, Marion could not help pitying her. Marrying a man of thirty-five was no walkover, poor kid, but marrying Lewis James! Inwardly she sighed for her in her innocence. But there it was, he was very rich, she would have anything she wanted, which, so long as she knew what she wanted, was after all not nothing.

  The dress, after many, many fittings and what finally seemed to Trilby to be endless months of preparation, turned out to be exactly as Lewis had described to Marion and she in turn had described to Trilby.

  Made of cream satin, it looked very stately from the back, with an embroidered train falling from a waistband of barely half an inch. The train was sewn for twelve inches with the most intricate knots and beads, and small heads of flowers, each one outlined in tiny diamonds and pearls, and the whole banded either end by a two-inch width of satin. The bodice too was embroidered, the embroidered piece shaped as a collar beneath which could be seen two small classically cut sleeves with edges picked out in the same detail. All in all it was a magnificent dress, but it was not all Trilby wore on that famous day. She also wore a modern tiara, the centre of which was a flower which Lewis had ordered to be designed as nearly as possible, because she so loved them, to look like a gardenia.

  The tiara was a new piece, commissioned especially for her as a wedding present by Lewis, and a great deal more simple than the old-fashioned, more traditional tiaras. It looked beautiful, because Lewis had been careful to have the jeweller match the diamonds to the cream of the dress. There was to be no blue in the gems, ‘only rose’.

  As a rule no-one remembers much of their own wedding, but Trilby remembered every little detail of hers.

  First of all she remembered her father standing waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, once Marion Holton, the hairdresser and most of Glebe Street had finished with her. Trilby was no hopeless romantic, but neither was she entirely devoid of sentiment. She had hoped that on seeing her Michael would look at the very least pleased, even perhaps a little overcome, because this was after all, to all intents and purposes, meant to be her big day. What she had not expected was that he would be staring at his shoes, smelling slightly of alcohol, and swaying. It was not something that she had thought would happen. As she reached the bottom of the stairs she looked directly at him, but he seemed intent on avoiding her eyes, as if she had come downstairs dressed in something outrageous, not a beautiful satin gown and a tiara.

  ‘The court photographer is waiting for you in there,’ he said baldly, nodding towards the drawing room door, and he stood stock still as she walked past him to join the myriad bridal attendants who were hopping and jumping around the room like so many dressed-up dolls while Mrs Johnson Johnson stood in the middle smoking and saying every now and then, ‘Now come on, darlings, be still, just for a few minutes, just for the photies, please, be still.’

  As she stood still as a marble statue for the old-fashioned photographer Trilby felt swamped with disappointment. She had always imagined that her father would be grateful for her getting married. After all at long, long last he would be alone with Agnes, and could give his second wife the sole attention that she so obviously craved. She had imagined that he would be proud of her, that he would think that she was doing well, that somehow she was making up for his being so unhappy, for his sense of not having ever had quite what he wanted.

  Moreover, by marrying Lewis and going to live elsewhere Trilby had fondly imagined that she was removing one helluva obstacle from her father’s marriage. Try as she would to absent herself from the house, spending more time with her neighbours than at home, Trilby knew herself to have been a constant source of irritation to her stepmother. Now she would be gone. Agnes would no longer have to grumble either about Trilby or to Trilby; she would be free of her stepdaughter. She would be free of her at long, long last after what must have been for her, poor woman, nine endless, tedious years.

  Later, walking down the aisle on her father’s arm, Trilby tried to remember all his many kindnesses to her, all his little comforting asides when Agnes went too far with one of her destructive remarks. His habit of leaving little sweetmeats by her bedside when he came back late from a restaurant, his defence of her looks. All this came to her as they walked slowly up the aisle, but even so, she could not prevent the overwhelming sense of relief that washed over her when the moment came when Michael placed her hand in Lewis’s and stepped back into his pew again.

  After that Trilby remembered only the trumpets, the faces, the flashlights, the sounds of the voices in the crowds outside oohing and aahing. She remembered Lewis stumbling over his second name when they took their vows, which made her smile reassuringly up at him, and press his hand. She remembered the smell of the arum lilies, which for one awful moment seemed so overpowering that she thought she might faint, which would have been particularly terrible because she knew that Lewis had flown in several hundred of them from somewhere very far away, and for no better reason than that Agnes had said that she liked them.

  And then, as always happens at weddings, events moved terribly quickly, and the wedding lunch
eon that had looked from the size of the menu to be going to take for ever was over, and Trilby’s tiara and veil were removed and she was being prepared by her new Chinese maid to change into her going away suit, a tightly buttoned coat and skirt, the latter long, nearly to her ankle, and the jacket distinguished by its large piqué collar and matching hat which gave her heart-shaped face a gamine look, since the hat was shaped in the form of a petal.

  She threw her bouquet towards the crowd below the staircase upon which they both stood before departing and Marion Holton, who was proudly unmarried, caught it quite by chance, and within a few seconds Trilby was kissing her goodbye, and kissing all the children who had made up her twelve attendants, and then, in the back of the limousine, kissing Lewis himself, which was the best kiss of all, naturally, while behind them followed another motor car bearing his valet, her maid, and all their luggage.

  Trilby had not wanted to go abroad for their honeymoon, and so Lewis, once more bowing to his young bride’s modest wishes, had taken over a small hotel in Cornwall, set right on the water. It was September, still a warm time of year in Cornwall, but by the time they reached the place, driving through the afternoon and evening, and stopping only for a drink and a sandwich, it was nearly midnight, and they were both tired.

  Lewis at once demonstrated how thoughtful he was, for, on seeing Trilby at the door of their bedroom barely able to keep her eyes open, he smiled, and kissing her hand, and then her lips, said tenderly, ‘I will leave you to your maid, darling, and see you in the morning.’

  In the morning Lewis knocked at her door, and Trilby, who was wide awake, called, ‘Come in!’ and no sooner had Lewis walked into the room than she ran across the room and flung her arms around his neck.

  ‘Look at the blue sky, look at the sea, right outside the window. As always when I am by the sea, I am in heaven!’

  A few minutes later it seemed that they both were.