Summer's Awakening (11 page)

In the restaurant, they were shown to a corner table. Was it deliberate unkindness which made him offer the chair in the corner to her? A slim person could have slipped into it without the table being moved. For her, the head waiter and another waiter had to move two chairs and pull the table out of position to make room for her to seat herself. It was done with swift, practised skill, but nevertheless it made her acutely conscious of her bulk. She knew her face was scarlet as she sat down and the table was pushed back, but not as far as before. Her fingers were trembling with mortification as she unfolded the starched damask napkin.

'Madame.'
The head waiter, a foreigner, handed her a red leather folder.

Thankfully she opened it and bent her head, pretending to pore over the menus; printed
à
la carte
dishes on one side, the typed
table d'h
ô
te
on the other. But the words were a meaningless jumble. The sherry had weakened her control and there were tears in her eyes as she stared unseeingly at the letters.

Although physically undeveloped, in some ways Emily was mature for her age. She was not in the habit of making embarrassing gaffes. But nor was she used to eating in public places and perhaps she was nervous.

She said, in an amused undertone, 'He called you
Madame.
He thinks you're James's wife.'

'I doubt that,' Summer said shortly.

She could guess what
he
must be thinking. Eliza Doolittle's comment—
Not bloody likely.

To her dismay, the child said, 'Why not? You could be.'

'Miss Roberts is too young to be married to someone of my age,' her uncle said smoothly.

'Summer is twenty-two. That's only thirteen years younger than you are.'

'Would you want to marry someone who was born this year?' he asked her.

Emily shook her head. 'No, because then I should be old when he was still young. But it's all right the other way round.'

'Where did you pick up that piece of worldly wisdom?'

'I heard Mummy talking to Lady Draycott about someone they know who is quite old but has a young husband. They said it couldn't possibly last. Lady Draycott said—'

'I'm sure Lady Draycott didn't realise you were listening, Emily,' Summer cut in. 'She was talking to your mother in confidence and wouldn't like the conversation to be repeated.'

She spoke more severely than usual and Emily looked hurt by the reproof.

"They knew I was there. I wasn't eavesdropping,' she said defensively.

The reminder of her own inadvertent eavesdropping, and how it had borne out the adage that listeners never hear good of themselves, renewed Summer's embarrassed flush.

An uncontrollable glutton... she must weigh as much as I do and most of her weight is blubber...

The shaming memory held her silent while Emily went on, 'Lady Draycott was only saying that her daughter and her son-in-law, who are both twenty-three, are always having quarrels and treading on each other's toes, and she wished Arabella had married somebody older—like Prince Charles and the Princess of Wales.'

She paused before adding, 'Then Mummy said that sometimes an age gap was the cause of the trouble, as it had been with Granpa and Granny. Did they have a lot of quarrels, James?

He ignored the question. 'Have you decided what you'd like to eat? If not, I suggest you stop chattering and read the menu.'

Quelled by this even sterner rebuke from her new idol, Emily hung her head and looked as if, like her tutor a few minutes earlier, she might be blinking back tears.

The head waiter returned to take their orders.

'Are you going to try one of our specialities, sir? The steak and kidney pudding is excellent, or you might like to try the jugged pigeons, an old Worcestershire recipe which the chef has revived. We are famous for our traditional English dishes.'

'But you're not English?'

'No, sir. I come from Italy. My wife is English. I've lived here for fifteen years, and I know English cooking, when it's well done, is as good as anything to be found on the Continent. We also have fish, if you prefer. The baked white fish with bacon is very good...'

He went on suggesting alternatives till James Gardiner silenced him with, 'I'll have the steak and kidney pudding. What about you two?'

While the head waiter was talking, Summer had been searching the menu for something which wasn't fattening. But there didn't seem to be anything. No doubt most people who lunched at the hotel were bent on feasting rather than fasting.

She chose the baked fish, with chicken soup for her first course, while the others had cream of celery. For her main course Emily asked if she might have roast duck.

There was already a roll on their bread and butter plates. To avoid drawing attention to herself, Summer broke hers when the others did.

'This is always a promising sign in an unknown restaurant,' said James Gardiner, as he passed her a dish of butter curls. 'When the butter is in foil-wrapped portions I don't expect to eat well.'

She took only one curl of butter and put it on the side of her plate. Then she spread a little on a small piece of bread. But she didn't put it in her mouth. Although she had eaten nothing since the night before—and then only eggs and oranges—in his presence her appetite deserted her. Even chocolate mousse or profiteroles wouldn't tempt her while
he
was beside her.

'Did you never come here before... when you lived here?' she asked.

'Yes, but it was under different management then.'

The wine waiter brought Perrier for her and Emily, and another glass of Carlsberg for him. He had asked if she would like to share a bottle of wine with him. When she demurred, he had said, 'In that case I'll stick to lager.'

After sitting in silence for some time, Emily ventured a question. 'How long will it take to fly to Florida, James?'

'About eight hours. There'll be a movie to help pass the time, and I'll try to arrange for you to visit the flight-deck.'

He glanced at Summer. She felt sure
he
was wondering if there would be room for her on the flight-deck. She wanted to cry out: I'm not as enormous as all that. You make me feel like a freak.

At that moment she would have given anything to have Emily's skinny wrists instead of her plump ones, Emily's bony knuckles instead of the dimpled depressions which showed where her own knuckles were.

The conversation throughout lunch consisted mainly of Emily asking questions about Florida and James answering them. Summer took little part in it.

She wondered why he had squashed Emily when she asked if her grandparents had had frequent disagreements. It might have been for the reason he had given, or perhaps he disapproved of discussing family matters in front of outsiders, or perhaps his parents and his upbringing were a sore point with him, one he preferred to ignore.

When the baked fish was placed in front of her, she was dismayed to see that as well as being flanked by rolls of bacon it had a crust of buttery breadcrumbs.

The vegetables were fresh and well-cooked. She was able, discreetly, to decline the potatoes. She would have liked to eat the fish and the Brussels sprouts and creamed spinach, and to leave the bacon and the crumb topping. But in a restaurant, with her new employer sitting beside her, noticing, she hadn't the courage.

It was the first time in her life she had ever had to force herself to eat something. Each time she swallowed a piece of bacon, she was dismally conscious that it would soon be undoing whatever improvement she had wrought by several days' semi-starvation.

Yet, before the end of the meal, she was to suffer a revulsion of feeling.

In place of the usual gâteaux and sugary confections, the restaurant offered a Victorian sherry trifle, apple pie, treacle tart, an old-fashioned steamed suet pudding stuffed with dates and sultanas and served with egg custard and, to Summer's relief, a fruit salad.

'Cream for you,
madame?'
The waiter stood at her elbow, holding a silver jug of fresh double cream.

And it was then, as if being obliged to eat something taboo during the previous course had somehow sapped the self-discipline she had exerted for nearly three days, that she almost said mentally, Oh, to hell with it—why not? and aloud, 'Yes, please.'

Only the presence of the man who had called her a glutton made Summer shake her head and say, 'No, thank you.'

She watched the waiter pour some cream over Emily's apple pie and then move round the table to repeat the process with James Gardiner's treacle tart.

She had always adored treacle tart; the pastry case filled with a deliciously glutinous mixture of course crumbs and grated lemon peel enveloped in golden syrup. Forcing herself not to look at the thick wedge of hot, sticky tart on James Gardiner's plate, she admitted to herself that, if she were shut in a room with his tart and Emily's pie, she would never be able to resist eating both in addition to her fruit.

Much as she longed to be slim, she was as addicted to food as a smoker to nicotine, a dipsomaniac to alcohol, or a junkie to dope.

Could she ever break free of her addiction, or would she always be tormented by pangs of longing when she saw other people eating the sweet things her mind rejected but her body craved?

Her dessert, an imaginative combination of fresh and dried fruit with a liqueur; possibly kirsch, added to the juices, was excellent. But it didn't satisfy her palate in the way which the pastry and cream which James Gardiner was eating would have done.

And he wouldn't put on an ounce, Summer thought enviously. Whereas her waistline was a fissure between her spare tyre and her tummy, the black leather belt slotted through the loops on his waistband encircled a muscular torso with no superfluous flesh, not even in the area where most men of his age had at least some padding, if not an incipient paunch. Before he had told her he was a company chairman, she had thought that whatever he did for a living must involve a lot of exercise.

'I wish you were flying to Florida with us, James,' said Emily, while the two adults were having coffee and she was nibbling the sweetmeats which the waiter had brought to accompany the coffee.

Her uncle said, 'You'll have my housekeeper, Mrs Hardy, to help you settle in, and I've no doubt Miss Roberts will quickly revert to her native language, even after a long break.'

Emily looked puzzled. 'I thought they spoke English in Florida?

'American-English which is not always the same as British-English. For instance, what does the word mall mean to you?'

Although she had never been to London, Emily said instantly, 'The drive from Buckingham Palace to Admiralty Arch where you get a good view of the coaches on special occasions like the opening of Parliament or the Royal Wedding.'

'Yes, or possibly Pall Mall, where some of the surviving men's clubs are, or even Chiswick Mall where people who have friends living there get an excellent view of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. But in Florida, you'll find that mall refers to large shopping arcades where people can do most of their shopping under cover and, in summer, out of the heat.'

'Is it
very
hot in the hot months?' Summer asked.

'Intensely hot... uncomfortably so. Florida is a winter place. Some people have to live there the year round, the way others have to endure the winters in New England. The hot months in Florida are fine for people who don't mind staying in an air-conditioned atmosphere. Houses and automobiles are air-conditioned, so are the malls and the supermarkets and restaurants. Unless there's a major power failure, no one has to sit around sweating. But I don't happen to like being indoors all the time, and so I only go there between October and April... when I want to unwind.'

'What does unwind mean?' asked Emily. 'Is that American-English?'

He laughed. Unwillingly, Summer had to admit he had an attractive laugh; both the sound, and the momentary glimpse of strong white American teeth.

'No, it's international office jargon meaning getting away from the pressures of business for a while,' he explained.

Summer was pondering the fact that she had thought of his teeth as American teeth.

She had still been wearing orthodontic bands on her teeth when she came to live with her aunt, and remembered being surprised that few English children seemed to wear them. Some of the English had excellent teeth; but, as a nation, they consumed enormous quantities of what she had once called candies and now knew as sweets, and this resulted in much decay. Upper- and middle-class people generally had good teeth, but not often as well-spaced and straight as her own and James Gardiner's teeth. In fact she had never before met an Englishman with what she called American teeth—he was the first one.

'Will you come to Florida for Christmas?' Emily asked.

Her face fell when he answered, 'No, but I'll probably fly down there some time in January or February.'

Summer had been worrying about Christmas before his arrival. Even if Emily's relationship with her parents had not been close, Christmas at Cranmere had been celebrated in a style she was bound to miss, especially this first year.