Summer's Awakening (29 page)

Another good feeling was the freedom of having a car to run around in, by herself, while knowing that she wasn't going back to an empty house and a lonely evening.

Yet another pleasure was the mellow warmth of the afternoon. In an hour or two there would be a spectacular sunset over the Gulf, but at present the light was still bright, the air temperature was warm as if it were June or July instead of early March.

Best of all was her new, shapelier self. Unexpected reflections in shop windows no longer made her miserable; an outcast from the world of attractive women. And as well as being slimmer, she seemed to have more zest for life, more mental and physical energy.

As she drove back across the causeway she was humming the principal theme from the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. She was still humming when she had to stop at the traffic lights at the junction with 41.

An elderly man in the car in the lane next to hers leaned out of his window. 'You sound very happy, young lady.'

She smiled at him. 'I guess I am.'

'Got a big date tonight, huh?' He winked at her.

The lights changed. The cars moved forward. Still smiling, Summer turned north while the other car headed downtown. Three months ago no one would have said that to her. Admittedly he had only been able to see her from the elbows up, but even that limited view would have been enough, last December, to indicate that she wasn't a girl who had dates.

I ought to write to that woman in the shop in Miami, she thought. I should thank her for changing my life.

Yet, deep in her heart, she knew it hadn't been the saleswoman who had done that. It had been James Gardiner's caustic indictment of her as a glutton which had jolted her out of her apathetic acceptance of her condition. The woman in Miami had pointed her in the right direction to find help. But the impetus to seek it had been the scathing male voice overheard from the Gallery at Cranmere.

For that impetus she would stand in his debt for the rest of her life; and, at the same time, she would never forgive him. What he had said about her to Dr Dyer had been an expression of contempt as unpardonably humiliating as if he had struck her, or spat on her.

She knew there was only one way she could purge her mind of that shaming memory, and that was by turning the tables on him, by making him fall in love with her, and rejecting him.

Which was such a wild, crazy idea that it made her blush to have thought it. James Gardiner in love with Summer Roberts? Impossible.

At Indian Beach Drive she turned off, wondering which beach the others had chosen for their walk. For some time Emily had wanted to see Midnight Pass, a break in the Keys farther south. Perhaps he had taken her there. If so, Summer hoped the place had lived up to its romantic name.

Thinking about the top she had bought for Emily and about its designer, Lilly Pulitzer, and the striking originality of her colours and patterns, she found herself wondering if perhaps she herself had a vocation which she hadn't yet discovered; something to do with colour and design.

Her aunt had decided for her that she was going to be a teacher, and she did enjoy teaching Emily. But every time she looked at her father's
trompe-l'oeil
paintings on the walls of the Octagon Room, she was filled with a longing to be able to create something beautiful, as he had She knew her ability to draw was better than average, but nothing like good enough for her ever to become a professional artist. What about the fringes of the art world? Interior design... fashion designing. Might she find her
métier
somewhere there?

Instead of going shelling, James had taken his niece across the Sunshine Skyway, the fifteen-mile-long bridge and causeway which spanned Tampa Bay, north of Sarasota. In St Petersburg, on the other side of the Bay, they had gone to a famous bookshop, Haslam's, to buy, among other things, an illustrated guide to shells.

'And I thought you'd like this, Summer,' said Emily, presenting her with a large book about embroidery, 'James says the author, Erica Wilson, has a summer house in Nantucket like he has.'

'This looks lovely, Emily. Thank you very much, darling,' she said, looking through the pages of needlework projects. 'I bought a present for you.'

The child was delighted with the top and rushed upstairs to try it on. But when Summer would have settled down to study her present more thoroughly, James said, 'Come into the library and I'll show you how the music centre functions.'

It turned out to be less complicated than it looked and, having shown her how it worked, he said, 'I hadn't realised that Weight Watchers included men in their classes. I thought they were only for women.'

'No, there are several men in my class.'

'And one who takes you for a drink after class, I hear.'

Had Emily volunteered that information, or had he extracted it from her?

'For a coffee, yes—sometimes,' she agreed.

Twice she had made an excuse not to have coffee with Hal, and once she had invited another class member to join them.

'What kind of guy is he?'

'A very nice one. You don't object to my having some friends of the opposite sex, do you?'

'In principle—certainly not. I'd prefer, for your own security, that you had some guarantee of their bona fides. Such as an introduction. Presumably anyone who can pay the fees can enrol for these classes. What's his name and what does he do?'

'His name is Hal Cochran and he's in the construction business.'

'I don't know any Cochrans,' said James. 'And "the construction business" covers a pretty wide field. Is that all you know about his job?'

'Hal lays roof tiles. He's twenty-eight, he lives with his widowed mother who's in hospital at the moment, and he spends a lot of his evenings baby-sitting for his married sister. He couldn't be more respectable and harmless.'

'A description which could probably be applied to a lot of unpleasant characters before they went berserk,' James said sardonically. 'Why isn't he married?'

'I have no idea. Why aren't you married?' she retorted.

'Because I agree with Sam Johnson that marriage is an unnatural state, and because I'm too involved in my work which, I imagine, is rather more satisfying and absorbing than your friend's occupation. An artisan of twenty-eight, still living at home, with a weight problem which impels him to join a predominantly female slimming class, strikes me as a pretty odd fish.'

'Well, he isn't. He's entirely normal.'

'How d'you know?'

'By instinct.'

'I think your instincts about men may not
be
as highly developed as those of most girls your age,'
he
told her. 'If I'm not mistaken, when I kissed you in the pool the night before last, it was the first time it had happened to you.'

Her clear golden skin was suffused by a wave of warmer colour. Had he no sensitivity that he didn't know what it did to her to be told, with unsparing bluntness, that no one had kissed her until she was twenty-two?

'I think, after the next meeting, you should bring him back here for coffee and let me be the judge of whether he's harmless or not,' James went on. 'But even if he is, I shouldn't have thought you had much in common.'

Before she could reply, Emily reappeared in her new top, which was probably just as well because she had been on the brink of losing her temper, Summer realised.

After dinner, James went out to visit some friends. Emily was disappointed—she had been hoping he would take her up to his room and put the computer through some more of its paces.

'But actually the one upstairs is obsolete now,' she told Summer. 'His newest one has a mouse, which is a gadget which makes it much easier to use a computer. James says it will take people forty minutes to learn what used to take forty hours with the first generation of computers.'

Presently, finding her enthusiasm for computers a little hard to share, Summer asked her to look up the lion's paw shell in her new book.

Emily consulted the index and turned to the page indicated.

'It doesn't say much about it.
The Lion's Paw.
Lyropecten nodosus.
Found in Florida and the West Indies. It belongs to the group known as Eastern American Scallops. A strong heavy shell, 3-5 inches. A collector's favourite.
Why are you interested in it, Summer?'

'Because I saw a beautiful necklace with a lion's paw as the pendant in Burdines yesterday. But it cost a great deal of money. Too much, considering that even a strong shell is still quite fragile.'

'Oh, I see.' Emily began to read the descriptions of other shells and soon was deeply absorbed.

Summer would have liked to become equally absorbed in her embroidery book. But James's remarks about Hal interfered with her concentration.

The annoying thing was that, in one particular, he had been right; she had little in common with Hal other than their need to lose weight. She had long since discovered that books, her refuge and solace, had no place in his life. Similarly none of his interests—baseball, bowling, clay pigeon shooting—had any appeal to her.

Realising their lack of rapport, she had tried to avoid always leaving the meetings with him and had been at pains to make friends with other women in the class. But it had been difficult to shake him off without being actively unkind. He was lonely and he liked her. How could she brush him off when, at the beginning, his friendliness had done so much for her morale?

'Hi, Summer. How did you do?' a friend asked her at the next meeting.

'Two pounds down. How did you do?'

The other girl groaned. 'Up half a pound. It must be water retention. I've been
starving
all week.'

As they chatted, Summer was aware of Hal at the back of the class. When it was over, he was waiting for her by the door. They walked to her car together, discussing Eleanor's lecture and the fortnightly module.

'Friday's my birthday,' he said suddenly. 'I'd like to take you out to dinner. I thought you'd enjoy the dinner cruise on the paddle-wheel steamer berthed down on Bayfront Drive?'

How could she refuse when he looked at her so hopefully?

'Thank you, Hal. That sounds fun,' she answered.

'I'll pick you up at a quarter of seven—okay?'

'Fine. I'll be looking forward to it.'

'Coming for a coffee?'

'Not tonight—I have to get back. I'll see you on Friday.'

Next day, although he knew she had been to a meeting the night before, James didn't ask why she hadn't carried out his instruction to bring Hal to the house.

On Friday morning, she told Mrs Hardy she would be out for dinner that night. But she didn't say anything to Emily until she was going up to change.

'Where are you going?' Emily asked.

'I've been invited to a birthday dinner on board the paddle-boat. By a Weight Watchers friend,' she added casually.

'Lucky you. I wish I were coming.'

'If it's fun, perhaps we'll go on a lunch cruise for your next birthday treat,' said Summer.

She was ready and waiting on the doorstep when Hal drove up in his Ford Escort.

'That's some house!' he said admiringly, taking in its balconied façade and blossoming creepers.

She felt relieved when he had installed her in the passenger seat and they were moving down the drive. Her employer's bedroom was on the bay side of the building. It was unlikely he had seen her departure. She wondered how he would react when he learnt she was out on a date with the man who had sounded to him 'a pretty odd fish'. Anyway, it was none of his business what she did in her free time, she told herself firmly.