Summertime

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Come in, come in.’ She called down to the kitchen. ‘It’s Trilby, she has just left Lewis James!’

  Mrs Johnson Johnson appeared at Aphrodite’s kitchen door smoking, as always, and wearing her familiar turban and long hostess gown in brightly patterned colours. But the brilliance of her gown and hat were as nothing to the sparkling expression in her eyes as she said, ‘Left Lewis James? Surely not, Trilby, you’ve only been married for a few weeks!’

  She sounded so excited at the thought of the possible ensuing drama that Trilby could not help smiling. ‘No, no! Aphrodite’s got the wrong end of the stick, Mrs J.J. I have only left Lewis at home because he is having breakfast with a whole lot of Americans, in the dining room, so I thought I would pop out, quite on my own, and come and see all of you here, in darling old Glebe Street.’

  There was a small silence and then Aphrodite said, ‘Oh, I see,’ and her brightened expression changed once more to deep gloom as she realised that Trilby had not left her husband after all. ‘Well, never mind, have some coffee anyway.’

  Trilby sat down thankfully in Aphrodite’s kitchen. It was so nice to be back with Aphrodite and Mrs Johnson Johnson, with the coffee brewing and Mrs J.J.’s fags stinking up the air and Aphrodite waiting, as always, with a resigned expression, for the Bomb to drop. It was so nice, so familiar, so all-embracing and warm, like a dear old much loved coat that you could pull round you, so familiar in its normality that she could have burst into tears of relief.

  After a long, long pause, Mrs Johnson Johnson stubbed out her cigarette and asked her if she had enjoyed her honeymoon.

  ‘Of course. It was lovely.’

  ‘I suppose it was the south of France and the Duke of Westminster on his yacht and everything – all that kind of fandango?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t actually. It was Cornwall, and buckets and spades, and all that.’

  Both the women stared at Trilby, not believing her.

  ‘That’s not what it said in the papers. In the papers,’ Mrs Johnson Johnson said, almost accusingly, ‘it definitely said that you were honeymooning in the south of France on Lewis James’s yacht, didn’t it, Aphrodite?’

  Aphrodite nodded gloomily. ‘Yes, that’s right. It definitely said you were honeymooning in the south of France. On the yacht. And that the yacht is moored right next to that Onassis man, or Lady Docker, or someone. People like that.’

  ‘Well, the newspapers were wrong, and I should know, I went on the honeymoon, not the newspapers, and I promise you, we went to Cornwall. Lewis took over the Blickling, it’s only a tiny little hotel, but it is right on the water, and we had a lovely bucket and spade sort of time. I didn’t want to go abroad, not after all that excitement, and so much to get used to.’

  Trilby laughed, lightly, but she could see that neither woman believed her, so that they did not join in the laughter.

  ‘Lewis James owns the paper for goodness’ sake, so he should have at least got that right,’ said Mrs Johnson Johnson, after a short pause. ‘He should at least have got where you went on honeymoon right.’

  ‘It’s not him that writes up that kind of thing, it’s all his minions. Besides, he probably wanted to put off the rest of the reporters, from other newspapers. He was probably putting them off the scent.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  Aphrodite poured Trilby some coffee just the way she knew she liked it, with a generous swirl of cream, and not at all like the coffee that was always served at Lewis’s mansion with hot, pale, boiled milk, milk that you could not sprinkle brown sugar on, and then watch as it sank to the bottom.

  ‘So, obviously, you are still married after all?’

  Trilby nodded. ‘Yup, I am married now, and I am very happy.’ They both stared at her. ‘No, really, I am. Very happy.’

  ‘We can only hope,’ said Aphrodite in her gloomiest tone, before passing Trilby a plate on which she had placed a home-made croissant with apricot jam and butter to the side of the knife.

  ‘I did thank you for that lovely wedding present, didn’t I? The vase, I did thank you, for the vase, Mrs J.J.?’

  Mrs Johnson Johnson’s nostrils flared slightly as she breathed out yet more cigarette smoke. ‘Oh, yes, Trilby, thank you, yes, you did thank me. But really, when you come to think of it – well, we all thought as a matter of fact, didn’t we, Aphrodite? We all thought that whatever we sent you, it was just coals to Newcastle, wasn’t it, love? I mean our poor little vase couldn’t mean very much after marrying Lewis James, in fact it could only mean very little indeed.’

  ‘I know that is what you must feel,’ Trilby agreed, munching her way through the most delicious croissant that she had eaten in weeks. ‘But as a matter of fact it was very much appreciated and I keep the vase in my room on the chest of drawers over by the window, and it reminds me of all my happy days here.’

  The two women stared at her and there was a short silence as they took in the sincerity of what she had just said.

  ‘Well, that is nice, Trilby,’ said Mrs Johnson Johnson, breathing out more smoke into the kitchen. ‘Really, that is very nice indeed. And shows a good unspoilt attitude.’ She leaned forward suddenly and kissed Trilby on the side of her head. ‘Don’t you think that is nice, Aphrodite? Don’t you think that is nice, about the vase?’

  Aphrodite turned from her stove, oven gloves covering the cuffs of her silk blouse, her eyes creased from the steam escaping from a pot whose lid she was lifting.

  ‘Oh, good, good. Yes,’ she agreed, but within a few seconds she was reading her newest recipe out loud to herself and not listening to anything that Trilby and Mrs Johnson Johnson were saying, which was probably why, noticing this, Mrs Johnson Johnson lowered her voice.

  ‘Poor dear, Geoffrey’s left her you know, just a few weeks ago. For an older woman too, such a shock at Aphrodite’s age, to be left for someone of over forty, but there you are.’

  ‘Geoffrey did rather get on her nerves.’

  Mrs Johnson Johnson nodded, and lit another cigarette. ‘Well, that is true, Trilby dear, but you know how it is, once someone leaves you they always appeal as having been a great deal more congenial than when they were actually with you and, as you say, getting on your nerves. At least that is what I have always found, with all three of my husbands. Still, it will give Aphrodite more time to worry about the Bomb, so that will cheer her up.’

  Trilby looked across at Aphrodite. ‘I expect she will find someone else soon.’

  ‘Oh, she has already, really, although she is busy pretending that she hasn’t, you know. One Jeremy Dartmouth. Tall, wears sandals and reads his poems to her while she cooks. She has always kept quite a few men on the side, our Aphrodite, she prefers to, just in case. Myself I don’t know how she does it, one man in one’s life is tiring enough I always say, they whack you out, men, really they do.’

  Trilby, now that she was married, was able to appreciate the significance of what Mrs Johnson Johnson had just muttered to her. She looked with renewed awe at dear old Aphrodite who she now realised quite obviously had barely hidden depths.

  ‘Thank you so much for the coffee, Aphrodite.’ She managed to kiss her despite the fact that the sauce was about to burn. ‘So nice to see you again. As I say, so awfully nice to see you both again.’ She kissed Mrs Johnson Johnson too, and this despite the smoke from her cigarette.

  There was a long silence after Trilby left, at the end of which Mrs Johnson Johnson lit a cigarette and breathed out slowly. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘she can’t really expect us to believe that she spent her honeymoon in Cornwall, but it was jolly sweet of her to try, I thought. Jolly sweet, don’t you think, Aphrodite?’

  Aphrodite nodded. ‘Hope she’s all right, looks a bit peaky to me.’

  Another silence and then Mrs Johnson Johnson said, ‘Perhaps she is peaky for a reason? You know.’ She made a gesture at the front of her own blossoming dress to indicate a large pregnant bulk.

  ‘Eating too much?’

  Mrs Johnson Johns
on sighed. ‘No, dear, preggers, you know? People do get preggers still, although you and I have both avoided it, thank God.’

  Outside in the street Trilby found that although she now had a vastly more glamorous home to return to, she was oddly reluctant to leave Glebe Street. It was as if she was hoping that by hanging around she might find someone who was missing her, who wanted her back living there, and, what would be better, was prepared to say so. She decided to try out her very last welcome on Berry. Molly being busy upstairs with her expected guests, she walked round to the back of the house and knocked on his studio door.

  He opened to her in quite the old way, paintbrush in hand, spectacles on the end of his nose, hair sticking out, as if he had not bothered to brush it since getting out of bed.

  ‘Trilby, pussycat, come in, come in!’

  He hugged her in his usual amiable way, smelling strongly of coffee and Gauloise cigarettes, turpentine and oil paint.

  As soon as she was seated in Berry’s little studio Trilby ripped off her expensive hat and gloves, threw them on a bench by the wall and kicked off her high-heeled shoes. ‘That’s better.’

  Berry stared at her solemnly. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? You were looking really rather old; almost like a dowager at the Ritz.’ They both started to laugh.

  ‘I was feeling quite old and like a dowager at the Ritz, I can tell you.’

  Berry picked up his beloved but battered coffee pot. ‘Stay right where you are. I am going to make you a cup of something so strong it will have you spinning round the room. Then we will call on Agnes, who I know will find out anyway if you don’t, and after that we will go off for a mad hatter’s shop, shall we? I love to shop with a rich woman, it has always been one of my very real delights, aside from darling Molly, of course.’

  Trilby watched Berry going to the small stove through the archway that led to his kitchen. The smell of oil paints, the rain pattering on the roof above them . . . she shut her eyes for a second and swallowed away what threatened to be a lump in her throat.

  It was all so comfortingly familiar, so much so that of a sudden Trilby could not remember why she had ever left Glebe Street.

  ‘Paine!’ Trilby called from the library door into the hall. The butler appeared as it always seemed to Trilby, as if from nowhere, out of the shadows, almost as if he had materialised and not just arrived from another room.

  ‘Mrs James.’

  Trilby turned on her heel and walked back into the library. ‘I am sorry to bother you, Paine, but I am a bit puzzled.’

  The expression on Paine’s face was that of polite but only vague interest. ‘Madam?’

  ‘The photograph, Paine, here – the photograph on the table. On this table – it was at the back of this table, and now it has gone. Do you know where it has gone, Paine?’

  ‘I do not do the dusting, madam.’

  There was a short pause while Trilby turned slowly to look from the table to the butler and back again. ‘No, of course, I don’t suppose you do dust, Paine. Oh, well, no matter. I’ll ask Mr James about it when he comes in for lunch.’

  ‘Mr James is not in for lunch today, Mrs James. He sends to tell you that he has a long meeting, to ask you to forgive him, and he will be in for dinner at the usual time.’

  Trilby nodded. ‘Thank you, Paine.’

  ‘Would Madam like some coffee sent in here?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I would, actually, Paine.’

  Despite herself Trilby could not help feeling secretly relieved that Lewis was not coming home to lunch. It would mean that she could work quietly in the library undisturbed.

  She sat down, and as she always did before she started work she took off her shoes. Yesterday, after their coffee, Berry and she had gone shopping, and with his encouragement Trilby had bought an absolutely outrageous outfit. It was only to be worn at home, of course, but it was such fun. A black worsted jersey top and red and white skirt quite full and belted, underneath which were worn matching houseboy pants cut to just below the knee. It made her feel gloriously mad. She had hoped to show it off to Lewis when he came in, but now, since he was not coming back for lunch, she felt it would be positively inspirational, and that work on The Popposites would fairly zip along after her visit to Glebe Street.

  She picked up her pencil and began to draw Mrs Smokey Smokey. The first drawing showed her in all her turbaned glory, her eyes narrowed against the smoke from her cigarette holder, lecturing Miss Golly Gosh.

  Now, as always happened when Trilby worked, within a few minutes she had quite forgotten where she was, or what the time was, or even to drink the coffee brought to her by Paine on a silver tray; so that when the library door was flung open a few hours later and Lewis appeared in the doorway, it seemed to Trilby that she was in a dream – except that minutes later, it was actually much more like a nightmare.

  But, as always, when Trilby was suffering, part of her mind took off in another direction so that it seemed to her that the anger was not really being directed at her, that Lewis was speaking to someone else, and that he really did not wish to hurt her, but was just trying out his words, much as she herself tried out dialogue with her cartoon strip.

  And his forehead was not looking ugly and reddened and his eyes narrowed because of her, but because of someone else, someone who was standing in for her, another person, someone quite different. Someone who was immensely shy, someone with a different personality, someone whom Trilby imagined that one day soon she might get to know really rather well, someone whom Lewis could not find, however angry he became, and however livid his forehead.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Where did you get those dreadful clothes? Why are you wearing them, Trilby? Why are you looking like that, like some sort of King’s Road arty slut, like some kind of cheap artist’s tart? Haven’t I bought you enough clothes? Haven’t you enough of everything here? Why are you looking like that?’

  Trilby felt as if she was being cross-examined by a policeman. ‘This, well, I, er, bought it yesterday, as a matter of fact, with Berry. We went shopping and I went to that new clothes shop near Harrods – you know the one, we stopped there the other day and you quite liked the clothes, didn’t you, Lewis?’

  ‘I don’t remember us stopping there?’

  ‘You must, because we laughed about putting one of my characters in some of the clothes, because they are really rather outrageous. You must remember.’

  ‘I do not remember any such thing.’ Lewis lit a cigarette and walked down the room to the French windows.

  In the pause Trilby said, ‘And, much as it is lovely to see you, Lewis, Paine said you were not coming home to lunch, he quite definitely said that.’

  ‘I was always coming home to luncheon. I was looking forward to lunching with you, alone, as we did yesterday. But not to lunching with you dressed like that, dressed in the sort of clothes that I detest.’

  Against her will Trilby’s heart was beginning to beat faster, so she made an effort to speak more slowly, trying to coax her husband to stop looking so grim.

  ‘It is all just a mistake, a silly mistake. I am only dressed like this because you said you were not coming home to lunch. But now I will put it right by changing out of my dotty clothes into something respectable that you will like better.’

  She turned to hurry out of the door, but Lewis caught her arm. ‘Don’t ever let me find you like that again, do you hear? You have ruined my day.’

  Trilby looked up at him. ‘As I just said, it is all easily remedied. I will quickly go and tell Paine we are in for lunch. I am sure that Cook can rustle us up something, and then I will change out of these offending clothes and into something more suitable for the dining room. Will that make oo happy?’ she finished, challenging him not to laugh.

  But the look in Lewis’s eyes told Trilby that he found her profoundly unamusing. ‘Please, I don’t have much time.’

  Having rung the hall bell for Paine and ordered smoked salmon, hard-boiled eggs, ham, anything t
hat they had in the kitchen that could be served in five minutes, Trilby fled upstairs and found Mrs Woo, smiling.

  ‘Emergency, Mrs Woo, I must change, Mr James is home unexpectedly.’ Trilby paused, thinking quickly. ‘Choose me something, anything, while I scramble out of these, and – Mrs Woo – this time, you can dress me.’

  Mrs Woo hurried away, still smiling. ‘Mrs James must always listen to Mrs Woo. Mrs Woo know best.’

  Trilby started to pull off the ‘fun’ outfit that she and Berry had so enjoyed choosing the previous day. She was slender, fit and young, but she found to her horror that at that moment she was sweating. She ran to the bathroom and started to powder herself as Mrs Woo flung open the vast cupboards that contained her new clothes.

  Downstairs Lewis stared at the drawings and characters that Trilby had been working on all morning. When she reappeared he looked up and said in a cold voice, ‘I have just been looking at your work, and I think you’ll find these need doing again, you know, Trilby. You would not want people to think that this is your work.’ He threw the drawings across the tightly buttoned velvet stool that stood in front of the fire waiting for some of Lewis’s tightly buttoned guests. ‘You seem to have lost what I would call your – carefree quality. Really quite laboured, these drawings, I would say.’

  Of a sudden Trilby, now suited and high-heeled, knew at once what this was all about. It was about taking the ‘Trilby’ out of her. At the same time her mind raced back to their honeymoon. How often Lewis had corrected her, and always now, she realised, just as she was enjoying herself – ‘Your button’s undone, darling’ or ‘Your nose needs powdering, Trilby.’

  It had seemed so nice, that he cared enough to want her to look her best. Not now though, not now that she thought she could hear doors all over the house not shutting, but slamming.

  She would have liked to say, ‘I know what you’re trying to do to me, and I’m not going to let you’, but Trilby had grown up with nothing but adults for company, and she had long ago learned not to show her feelings to anyone, because older people never seemed to understand your inner restlessness, not really, and sometimes not at all, and certainly not for most of the time. Now a sudden feeling of cold reality told Trilby that Lewis was not just older, he was much worse: he was grown up.