Summer's Awakening (12 page)

The house had always been filled With guests, all of whom had brought presents for her. Not only would she be denied the excitement of opening a large number of presents, but, at a deeper level, she could not fail to be conscious of her aloneness; of having no family any more.

When her uncle had paid the bill, Emily said, 'Instead of coming with you to the estate agent, Summer, could I go back to the bookshop, and have another browse?

'I don't see why not. You've got your puffer with you?'

Emily nodded and produced the small aerosol inhaler from which, if she started to wheeze or thought she might start, she could give herself a puff of bronchodilator.

'Have you any money?' her uncle asked.

'No, but I don't want to buy anything, only to look.'

'Buy yourself two or three paperbacks for the journey.' He gave her a crisp new banknote.

Her eyes widened. 'Golly! Ten pounds.'

He said, 'If you get tired, come back here and sit in the lounge till we come. If we haven't turned up by four, order some tea.'

The offices of the town's oldest-established estate agent were a short walk from the hotel. As she hurried along beside him, Summer seized the opportunity presented by Emily's absence to bring up the subject of Christmas.

She began by saying, 'Where will you be spending Christmas, Mr Gardiner?'

'Skiing at Gstaad.'

His reply shocked her. She had assumed he must have an important reason for not coming to Florida, but that she might be able to convince him that nothing was more important than that Emily should not feel bereft and miserable.

His casual announcement that he would be enjoying himself in Switzerland took her breath away. Was this how he meant to discharge his responsibility? By being lavish with pin-money, but niggardly with the love and attention his niece needed far more?

'Oh, a white Christmas in the Alps—how nice. Emily would love that. As it's her first Christmas as an orphan'—she used the emotive word deliberately—'couldn't she spend it there, with you? She wouldn't interfere with your skiing. She's always perfectly happy as long as she has something to read.'

'If I were staying in an hotel it might be possible, although difficult, to get them to squeeze her in somewhere,' he agreed. 'But I'm staying at a private ski lodge and my hosts wouldn't take kindly to having a child foisted on them.'

'Are you sure? I should have thought most people would stretch a point in these special circumstances. After all, loving kindness is what Christmas is all about.'

'Not to most people, Miss Roberts,' he said dryly. 'In general, it's an excuse for eating and drinking and that unwinding I was talking about earlier.'

His cynicism repelled her. She had never believed the people—Miss Ewing among them—who claimed that the true spirit of Christmas was lost nowadays, swamped by commercialism. The Christmases of her childhood had been magic festivals. Her parents had always included one or two old or lonely people in their celebrations, and many of the gifts she had helped her mother to wrap had been for recipients who otherwise might not have shared in the annual upsurge of loving and giving.

'You could explain to them and ask them?' she persisted.

He shook his head, starting to frown. 'I shouldn't dream of putting them in the awkward position of having to refuse; not only on their own account but in the interests of their other guests. It won't be the kind of house party where a child wouldn't be noticed. They would find her presence intrusive, and she wouldn't feel comfortable either.'

Without stopping to think, she said curtly, 'What on earth do they do when not skiing? Smoke hash and go in for group sex?'

His grasp on her arm made her stop short. As he scowled down into her face, she found several new and alarming ideas flashing through her mind.

He was looking furious. Was it because she had hit on something? Could it be that his father had thrown him out and disowned him because he had been caught taking drugs or, worse, pushing them? At one time there had been a wave of expulsions at England's so-called public schools, which were actually very expensive fee-paying schools, for such crimes. Obviously, a man as fit-looking as James Gardiner couldn't be on drugs himself; but it could be that the huge income he claimed to be making from computers came from a more sinister trade.

The thought that Emily might now be dependent on a man who lived on the proceeds of other people's degradation filled Summer with horror and rage.

'No, they do not,' he said tersely. 'They're merely a group of people who don't happen to want children underfoot—or yapping lap dogs, or chain-smokers, or any of the various other nuisances which people are perfectly entitled to exclude from their lives if they wish to.'

'They sound a fun crowd,' she retorted, equally tersely.

His black look lightened a little. 'I wouldn't say that precisely. They're all interesting, distinguished people whom I count it a privilege to mix with. If you must know, they include a couple of older people who haven't yet got over a particularly horrible tragedy. Their son and his wife and their two grandchildren were involved in an accident with a car driven by youngsters who were high on drugs. The parents and one child were killed outright. The other child—a girl the same age as Emily—is now a permanent hospital case. Now do you see why I can't ask my hosts to include her?'

'Yes,' she conceded. 'Yes, I do. But what I don't understand is why your concern for Emily doesn't outweigh your concern for them. Would it be such an intolerable sacrifice to give up your Christmas plans to make her Christmas less forlorn?'

'It won't be forlorn. She'll be in an interesting new environment and she'll have you with her. Until a few days ago, she barely knew I existed. You're a much more important figure in her life than I am—and at this stage, she's more important to you than to me,' he added. 'She seems a nice enough child, but I'm afraid my affections are not so easily engaged that I'm ready to prefer her company to that of my friends.'

Now that her flare of anger and suspicion had subsided, she could see the force of his argument. Emily had taken to him because she was an impressionable teenager whose father had never quite fulfilled her longing for someone to love, admire and depend on, and whose uncle seemed, on first acquaintance, as if he might fulfill all those needs.

He, on the other hand, was a mature, sophisticated male who, if he needed affection and admiration, would seek it from girls much older than Emily. Sex, perhaps pride of possession, and possibly intellectual stimulus would be what he required of the female sex. Not the innocent hero-worship of a flat-chested child of thirteen.

They walked the rest of the way without speaking. At the entrance to the building, as he pushed open the heavy swing door for her, she was aware of the pleasure of being treated with chivalrous courtesy by a member of the opposite sex. Yet at the same time she knew that, on this occasion, he had performed the action as an automatic reflex, not because she aroused his protective instincts. He didn't see her as a woman; only as the grotesque outsize frump who was tutor to his niece.

She didn't want to be, but she was glad of his support in the discussion with the estate agent. If he hadn't been with her, she knew she would have been dealt with by a junior clerk at the front desk, not ushered into the office of one of the partners.

And it wasn't because, in making the appointment by telephone, he had given his title or said he was ringing from Cranmere—they knew him only as Mr Gardiner. But he was the kind of man—she couldn't deny it—who, by something in his air and manner, commanded respectful attention. He might repudiate his heritage, but he could never rid himself of the innate authority bred from generations of power and influence.

Mr Watts, the partner who attended to them, was a bald man who tried to disguise this by carefully smarming his hair sideways. His manner was professionally genial.

'As it happens, we have a very nice elderly couple who are looking for somewhere to rent in your area,' the agent told her. 'They spent their working life in Africa. For the past seven years, they've been living in retirement in Spain, but they feel that now, in their seventies, they should come back to England. They're planning to build a small house, but it may take some time. If you're agreeable to a year's lease, they could be ideal tenants for you, Miss Roberts.'

The idea of renting, rather than selling in haste, was more appealing to her. She felt the cottage was a sheet-anchor which, if the worst came to the worst—and she had no specific calamity in mind, only a vague unease—she and Emily would have in reserve. Although if there were tenants living in it, they themselves wouldn't be able to live there until the lease had expired.

'I think you had better come and look at the place, and then advise Miss Roberts about an appropriate rent and the price she could expect if she sold it, Mr Watts,' said James Gardiner.

Summer felt sure that, had she been on her own, Mr Watts would have agreed to do this—when he had time. It was only a two-bedroomed cottage from which, if he did sell it for her, he wouldn't derive much commission.

But with James Gardiner as her spokesman, the agent said, 'Yes, by all means. In fact I can come over later this afternoon, if that would suit you.'

'That would be splendid,' she said gratefully, giving him one of the smiles only seen by people who didn't make her feel self-conscious.

As he rose to show them out, he said, 'How long have you had your cottage, Miss Roberts?'

'It was left to me a year ago, but I've lived there for twelve years.'

'Ah, then you know the village well. Have you heard any rumours about Cranmere?'

'Rumours?' she echoed guardedly.

'About what's going to happen to it. There's no male heir, I understand, only an invalid daughter.'

She said, 'I don't have much to do with the village people. If there are rumours going about, I haven't heard them.'

'Let's hope it doesn't go the same way as Mentmore, the Rothschild mansion,' he said. That's now the headquarters of some strange religious cult, you know. The Government should have bought it for the nation. A sad loss to our heritage... a very sad loss.'

'Crocodile tears!' was James Gardiner's caustic comment a few minutes later, when they were outside in the street. 'If I asked Watts to handle the sale of Cranmere, he'd be only too delighted. Agents don't worry about other people's reverses if they can benefit from them.'

'Isn't that rather unfair? He provides a service which people need.'

He glanced sideways at her. 'That's the second time you've accused me of unfairness. I think if we're going to have dealings for a number of years, you'd better accept from the start that I'm not and never was a model of the English public school ethic of fair play and a stiff upper lip at all times.'

For the third time that afternoon she spoke without thinking.

'That
was clear from the outset,' she informed him tartly. And then gave a smothered gasp as she realised she was speaking to her employer.

Far from looking annoyed, he laughed. 'I like you better when you speak your mind than when you're being pious, Miss Roberts.'

But I don't like you, and never shall, she retorted silently.

'On the other hand, I applaud your discretion when Watts was trying to pump you just now. Your answer was evasive but not untruthful. In spite of your lapse the other night, normally you disapprove of untruths as strongly as of unfairness, I expect?'

'Yes, I do. Don't you, Mr Gardiner?'

'I daresay I'm as truthful as the next man,' Was his casual reply. 'As we're both Americans, don't you think it's time we stopped being formal. Even the British get on first-name terms pretty quickly these days, I noticed while I was in London. You've no objection to my using yours, have you?'

'No... not at all.' But she didn't want to call him by his.

'I've never met or even heard of a woman named after one of the seasons before,' he went on. 'But why not? Most of the names of the months have been used. April... May... June... Julia... Augusta. You were born in summer-time presumably?'

'Yes: on Midsummer Eve—June twenty-third.'

She could guess what he was thinking; that, for the person she had turned out to be, no name could be more ill-chosen. A girl called Summer should be
a
fairy-like creature, not a great galumphing 'hulk'.

She said, 'Last night, when you told her Cranmere had to be sold, what was Emily's reaction?'

'She accepted that if I said it was necessary, it was. I believe she has an adventurous streak which perhaps, up to this point in her life, hasn't been recognised because she's been sublimating it, reading other people's adventures. Have you ever looked closely at the portrait miniature of Maria Lancaster, painted in 1810, the year before she took off on her travels?'

The Castle contained many of the small portraits, painted on vellum or ivory, which in previous centuries had taken the place of family photographs.

'I don't think I have? Which room is it in?'

'It always used to be in the Yellow Bedroom, unless it's been moved, which I doubt. It was hung rather high, and surrounded by other paintings, so it didn't catch the eye; particularly as, in her thirties, Maria wasn't a beauty. Later on she published her
Memoirs.
Maybe you've read them?'