Summertime

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘It must be marriage,’ she said, laughing lightly, in answer to his criticism. ‘I must have grown serious, and so must you. You used to laugh at my oo jokes, they used to make you laugh.’

  ‘I really think you can do better than this, Trilby.’ Lewis seemed not to have heard and he was still not laughing.

  ‘Oh, really. Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I really think you can do much, much better than this, Trilby.’

  ‘Oh. I thought it had gone rather well. But there you are, obviously not.’

  Lewis shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yes, we can all be fooled, darling, all of us. Sometimes even I can be fooled.’

  ‘Really? I can’t believe that,’ Trilby murmured, as she poured herself a tomato juice from the drinks tray.

  Lewis looked up quickly at that, suspecting sarcasm, but perhaps because Trilby still took care to smile he lit another cigarette and picked up the early edition of the evening paper.

  Meanwhile Trilby carefully tore up her morning’s work, first in two, then in four, and finally, with some difficulty, into eight, and threw it on the fire. She did not mind doing her drawings again, what she minded was the look in Lewis’s eyes.

  Of a sudden it seemed to her that he had mistaken her for someone who worked for him on one of his newspapers, and although he might think he was paying her, or even that he owned her now, it was not true, because she knew that she was still Trilby Smythson, a free spirit. So, whatever he might think of her talent’s having lost its carefree quality, he himself had lost his charm.

  During lunch, hastily flung together by Paine and one of the maids, Lewis said, ‘By the way, who is Berry?’

  Thinking that he was referring to the strip, Trilby answered, ‘Oh, he’s the Wiz. Remember? I told you? In the strip, he’s the one with the hair that sticks up on end. He’s a painter. Not in the strip, but in real life. He paints.’

  She was finding unearthly difficulty in swallowing her smoked salmon. Somehow, if you were upset, smoked salmon tasted slimy and fishy in a way that it did not usually, and of course the slower she was in eating the more Lewis seemed to be intent on watching her, so that she felt that just the act of her chewing the fish so slowly was setting his nerves even more on edge, if that were possible.

  ‘I did not mean in your strip, as you call it, Trilby, I meant yesterday, who or what were Berry and you doing out shopping together, yesterday?’

  Trilby cleared her throat and answered over-brightly, ‘Well, if you remember, yesterday you were breakfasting here with all those American businessmen, so I popped out to Glebe Street, you know, just to see Molly and Berry and Aphrodite and Mrs Johnson Johnson, and generally say hallo to the rest of them. And of course after that my stepmother, because my father was at work, as usual. They are my family, you see, Lewis. I don’t have any other family, just my father and stepmother and the folks in the street.’

  ‘Folks.’ Lewis repeated the word disdainfully, as if it was a swear word.

  ‘Well, not folks, perhaps, people, people in the street.’ That awful feeling of becoming flushed and confused was coming over Trilby. She picked up her glass of water as unhurriedly as possible and drank thankfully from the ice cold water in the cut glass tumbler.

  Please God she did not show her nerves, most especially not to Lewis who, because he was so powerful, must see more frightened people in the course of one day than Trilby had ever met. No, whatever happened she must not seem to be quaking at the knees like the rest of his minions, she must not be seen to be frightened.

  ‘Yes, of course, your father is your only real relative, isn’t he?’ The expression in Lewis’s eyes was oddly opaque, as if he had put his own thoughts on hold.

  ‘You know that, Lewis. Don’t you remember? My guest list at the wedding was really rather short on relatives.’

  ‘Did you see your stepmother yesterday?’

  ‘You know I did.’

  ‘How do I know you did?’ His voice was over-patient.

  ‘Because, Lewis, she told me herself when she rang me this morning. She said that you had telephoned her and had a nice chat, just after I had left her house to go for a mad shopping spree with Berry. You were sweet to her, she said.’

  ‘So much on my mind, I can’t be expected—’

  ‘No, no, of course not.’ Trilby smiled to make up for everything and suddenly for no reason at all Lewis too smiled, and it was his best and most beautifully warm smile, the one that Trilby realised she was gradually growing to dread.

  ‘Let’s go and make love, darling,’ he whispered as he stood behind her chair, helping her up. ‘Let’s go and make mad, passionate love.’

  Lewis left almost immediately for the office, so he did not see his young wife’s bewildered hurt, or hear her in the bathroom squeezing out endless cold flannels to put on her eyes, or see her showering and soaping herself for minutes on end, trying to wash away her unhappiness.

  Later she crept downstairs and retrieved her artist’s folder from the library, pausing, she did not know why, to look once more for the photograph of the beautiful woman on the large table.

  But the photograph was still absent, and so, she realised of a sudden, was her inspiration. She looked down at the green marbled cover of the folder. Normally it gave her such a thrill just to hold it, but now, staring down at its familiar cover, all she could hear was Lewis’s voice saying, You seem to have lost your carefree quality.

  ‘I am going to lie down, have a rest until dinner, Mrs Woo. If anyone telephones perhaps you could be kind enough to ask them to call back?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs James.’ Mrs Woo looked unsurprised. Of a sudden she reminded Trilby of the chauffeur that first evening she had been taken to dinner with Lewis. As if she too had seen it all before. Not that Trilby cared. She lay down on her bed, and in the darkened room she wondered to herself what ‘love’, so-called, was all about.

  ‘I am going to take you shopping again, and then to the theatre tonight!’

  Trilby tried to smile across the breakfast table at Lewis and at the same time looked surprised. ‘I thought you had to fly to Paris?’

  Some weeks had passed, weeks of returned happiness, so much so that Trilby had begun to think that the events that had followed her fateful shopping trip with Berry had never really happened.

  ‘I was going to Paris, but I cancelled it. I shall take you to the theatre and then dinner at the Savoy. But first I am taking you shopping.’

  Everywhere they went that day Trilby noticed that people bowed, and sometimes the women even seemed about to curtsy to Lewis, they were obviously in such awe of him. In the shops, in the salons, wherever they went, followed quietly but doggedly by the chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, people’s faces changed at the sound of ‘Mr and Mrs Lewis James’.

  It was not as if the faces took time to adjust. The fact was that people’s everyday expressions disappeared within seconds, literally wiped off as with a duster over a blackboard, followed by oh my God it’s Lewis James.

  Trilby knew that Lewis was famous, rich and very powerful, but until that particular day the real impact of his fame had not come home to her. She had not truly realised that his newspaper empire was quite so powerful, not just in his and his editors’ eyes, but in everyone else’s eyes too. Lewis’s empire with its vast readership was probably as powerful as the monarchy, or the government, Trilby thought suddenly, as she slipped into yet another evening dress and dutifully reappeared in the salon for Lewis to view her, standing hips slightly forward while he lazed in his chair talking in a desultory way with the usual clutch of women wearing black dresses and anxious expressions.

  ‘Yes, we will take that, and the previous one, but not the red. I never want to see my wife wearing either red or orange, is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, Mr James.’

  ‘And she is always to wear high-heeled shoes. All the outfits—’ He turned to Trilby, whose heart was sinking. She had started to hate high-heeled shoes, keeping her seams str
aight, suspenders, the whole paraphernalia. In Glebe Street, before she was married, she had worn Capri pants and bell-bottoms, all sorts and shapes of trousers and all sorts and shapes of clothes during the day, and the high-heeled shoes and stockings were kept for high days and holidays. ‘All the clothes that you wear, darling,’ Lewis continued, this time to Trilby, ‘they must all be worn with high-heeled shoes and stockings with seams.’

  Oh, those seams! The hours that Trilby would spend making sure that the seams of her stockings were straight were almost innumerable.

  ‘I love you so much . . .’ Lewis told her after they had made love, yet again, after lunch.

  Trilby stared at the ceiling, not really thinking of what had just happened, but instead experiencing a feeling of dread as her thoughts strayed towards evening. She dreaded wearing the clothes they had just bought, which although beautiful seemed to look so very old. Most of all she dreaded the high-heeled shoes that made her feel like Marion Holton.

  Lewis sprang out of bed singing, and shortly afterwards returned to the office. Opening her bedroom door, Trilby could hear the hall door being shut by Paine down below, far below. She crept back into her room, closed the door so gently that she imagined that not even Mrs Woo could hear it, and locked it. Then, getting down on her hands and knees, she fished two packets out from under the satin-covered bed, a large one and a small one, carefully boxed up and wrapped in tissue paper to look as if they held clothing.

  Her drawings and her pens and pencils. The Popposites – at least she had them. She crept into her bathroom and started to spread out her things. No-one knew what she did on her own for hours in there. It was her secret.

  David Micklethwaite was smiling but perhaps because his features were so small it was not a particularly heartwarming sight.

  ‘I know it’s hard, but it’s bound to happen, Trilby. After so much excitement, and now when so much has been happening – I understand that you attended the masked ball in Venice last week?’

  ‘Yes, yes, we did.’

  ‘And according to the newspapers you were the belle of the ball?’

  ‘Well, yes, but we could not exactly take that as read, could we? Since Lewis owns most of the newspapers!’ Trilby laughed humourlessly. The masked ball in Venice had of course been spectacular, the best bit, for her, being that most of Lewis’s friends were – and remained – masked.

  ‘As I say,’ Micklethwaite continued, ‘it is only natural that your work should go off, you know, when there is so much going on in your life at the moment.’

  Trilby, feeling faint, and dry-throated, nevertheless smiled, as she knew she must. ‘In what way,’ she asked, determinedly, her voice remaining as bright as was possible, ‘in what way does the editor feel my work has gone off, as you call it? I mean how has it changed exactly?’

  For the first time during their interview together, David Micklethwaite looked uncomfortable. He started to walk about the library, picking up things that he should not touch, valuable ornaments, photographs in silver frames, and putting them back, crooked, or without looking at them, before moving on and staring at paintings that he must have seen a thousand times. Eventually he turned back to Trilby who was seated, waiting, by the fireside.

  ‘It is just not funny any more, Trilby. Just not funny, do you see? No-one, no-one in the office, none of the staff – none of them find The Popposites funny any more.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘That particular flair that you once had – that you first had rather – well, since you have been married, it’s just petered out, really. It is a bit sad, but of course, given your circumstances, it is only a bit sad. I mean you are not exactly dependent on the strip, are you?’

  He gave a knowing laugh and at the same time his eyes moved round the room taking in the luxurious furnishings, the great paintings, the silver, the ornaments.

  Trilby was silent. It was true, of course, she was not at all dependent on The Popposites for her daily living. To try to insist as much, living as she now did, would be ridiculous. She was far from dependent on them, in fact she was very much the opposite, and yet – they were her life. She had been living with those characters for months and months now, and she loved them all. They were part of a world that she had once inhabited and now created. They were her friends. They made her laugh, and somehow by making her laugh they gave her hope.

  She stood up. ‘Thank you very much for coming. Please send my apologies to the editor and the staff, and all Lewis’s other minions. How awful, and indeed how strange, that, of a sudden, since I was married, the strip is no longer funny.’ She smiled, staring at Micklethwaite, realising now that she was close to him that if she was drawing him she would think of a ferret. ‘No, I am – I am sorry, really sorry, that the strip is no longer funny.’

  She turned and walked away from him down the room. ‘I really am very, very sorry, most of all because if there is one thing that no-one can ever prove, no creative person can ever, ever prove, that is that their work is funny. You can prove it is well drawn, that it has a searching or analytical quality, that it is satirical, true to life, contains pathos, is sad, and dramatic, but not funny. So you really must be congratulated. You and your editor have effectively killed The Popposites. I shall never, ever, you see, be able to sit down and draw them without hearing your voice saying what you have just said: that the strip is no longer funny.’

  Still smiling, she picked up a small glass vase and quite suddenly let go of it. Unsurprisingly it crashed to the floor, splintering.

  ‘Now, that,’ she said to David Micklethwaite, watching his expression of astonishment, ‘that, on the other hand, is very, very funny indeed.’ She laughed, genuinely. ‘I mean the expression on your face just then, that is very, very funny, believe me!’

  David Micklethwaite left the room.

  Trilby watched him from the hall window. He hurried across the road and into his fawn-coloured car, unlocking it and scrambling in as if he had just carried out a hit on her, which, it suddenly seemed to Trilby, might be exactly what he had done.

  He had murdered Trilby’s small talent, shot it through the head, and then hurried off back to his car.

  She turned away from the window feeling ill and sick. Of course she was not bleeding to death inside – she just felt that she was. Worst of all, she was lacking gumption, feeling sorry for herself. Berry would be ashamed of her. Lacking gumption was one of Berry’s worst criticisms of anyone, and she would not be an object of his pity at that moment, she would be an object of his derision.

  Trilby sat down on the bottom step of the staircase and stared ahead of her.

  Thank God it was Paine’s afternoon off, and the house was filled with that kind of quiet that swamps the senses with relief. Thank God she knew that Mrs Woo was out shopping and the maids were all footling about somewhere well out of sight – most likely smoking and gossiping by the dustbins. Somehow, to be alone just now was so right, so reassuring. She wanted no-one around her. What was more she could think of no-one in her whole new world, her married world, who could possibly understand how she felt at that moment.

  She started to laugh to herself at the thought of trying to explain her feelings to any of Lewis’s friends – Lola de Ribes, say, with her stiff hair and her lightly sarcastic laugh. She imagined Lola saying in response, ‘But my dear Trilby, you are married to Lewis, why would you need to draw a silly little strip?’

  ‘Why indeed? Because – I am still Trilby.’

  ‘In that case you should perhaps try now to forget that you are Trilby and be Madame James, my dear.’

  Trilby’s thoughts turned back to Berry. He was the one person in her whole life who would understand exactly how she felt, just so long as she did not appear sorry for herself. He had no time for people who felt sorry for themselves.

  She had been sacked. She had been told she was not funny. In a bare quarter of an hour she had been creatively annihilated. She stood up and rang the bell. No-one answered and so, a
fter some searching because she knew nothing of where anything in the house was kept, she eventually found a dustpan and brush under the stairs, and slowly brushed up the broken glass from the silly little vase.

  She did not care if or when Lewis came home. She would go and see Berry. She was not a prisoner. She would go and see whoever and whatever she wished and no-one could stop her. She hurried upstairs and fetched her black Christian Dior coat with its attractively deep velvet cuffs and collar. Black was how she felt and black was how the world looked at that moment. The coat seemed to settle around her in a comforting way. She tiptoed quietly downstairs again and making sure that there was no-one about she shut the front door behind her as quietly as was humanly possible, and hurried out into the rain.

  Once outside the house she started to run, and as she ran she had the oddest sensation. It was cracked, it was dotty, but she felt as if she was being followed.

  She told herself that if it went on like this she would go mad, and the next minute she would start seeing pins in everything, as one of Mrs Johnson Johnson’s golfing friends had once done, before they took the poor woman away to be locked up in some awful institution.

  Being followed? What a ridiculous notion! She kept running down the long hill towards Kensington High Street, where she stopped and waved down a taxi cab.

  ‘Hyde Park, once round the park, and then double back to Knightsbridge,’ she told the cab driver. ‘I am being followed.’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ the cab driver agreed in a disinterested voice.

  ‘I am, I am being followed, you’ll have to turn, driver, and try and lose them.’

  ‘Very well, miss.’

  Trilby stared back through the taxi window. It was true. She was being followed, by Lyons, Lewis’s chauffeur, in the Rolls-Royce.