Summer's Awakening (17 page)

From the restaurant, they walked the short distance to Bond Street and turned in the direction of Piccadilly. Yves St Laurent... Hermes... Ted Lapidus... Gucci... Ferragamo... Loewe... Chanel. The internationally famous names, the glimpses of elegant clothes and expensive leather goods turned her thoughts from a lingering longing for the taste of cheesecake to the unknown pleasure of wearing beautiful clothes.

Emily was disappointed that the windows of the great jewellers—Cartier, Kutchinsky, Boucheron, Philip Antrobus—were denuded of the glittering jewels she had expected to see.

'A sign of the times,' said James. 'They put them away before they close. You have to ring a bell on the door before you can walk inside most London jewellers' shops nowadays.'

The remark made Summer wonder if he knew this by hearsay or experience. And, if the latter, what he had bought and for whom?

In Piccadilly, they walked past the Ritz Hotel and along the edge of Green Park until James hailed a taxi to take them the rest of the way.

At the flat, Emily needed no urging to have a hot bath and go to bed. By the time Summer had finished in the bathroom, the child was asleep with Cyprian tucked in beside her.

Knowing she felt sheepish about her attachment to him, but would be profoundly upset if he were packed in the luggage and it became lost or misrouted, Summer had given her a tote bag in which, safely curled at the bottom, under books, he could travel in the cabin with her.

Not long after switching out Emily's light, she turned out her own and was soon asleep.

Much of their last day in England was spent looking round Harrods, the greatest department store in Europe, where the Queen did her Christmas shopping and where they found hundreds of her subjects crowding certain departments in search of presents.

Wandering wide-eyed round the Food Halls and the white marble Perfumery where girls, their eyes and lips painted in the style advocated by whichever of the great cosmetic houses they represented, were spraying scent on customers' wrists or demonstrating make-up colours on the backs of their own manicured hands, Summer and Emily were conscious of being country bumpkins.

'What is a bumpkin in America?' asked Emily, as they glided to a higher floor.

Summer dredged her memory. 'A hick.'

'We're a couple of hicks who've just come up from the sticks...' Emily sang, to the tune of
We're A Couple Of Swells.

Her pale little face was aglow with the thrill of seeing London decked for Christmas, all the great stores vying with each other to have the most enticing windows, the most spectacular façades.

Having left them to their own devices during the day, that night James took them to the theatre. He had chosen a musical show and both this and the theatre itself were perfect for the occasion.

The small, intimate, old-fashioned theatre, still with its gilded decorations and two tiers of private boxes on either side of the proscenium arch, was a much nicer introduction to London's theatres than a large, modern auditorium.

And the show, with its light-hearted theme and catchy melodies, was an ideal choice for the eve of a transatlantic journey about which, even though she had done it before, Summer was beginning to have tremors. It wasn't the flight which caused the butterflies. It was going from the known to the unknown—with no way of coming back if they didn't like it there.

Next morning James said, 'I won't come to the airport with you. I have an appointment at the time you need to arrive there, and I'm sure you can manage to get from the taxi to the check-in without any assistance. There'll be luggage trolleys available. You won't have to carry your bags.'

'Yes, of course we can manage,' said Summer. 'There would be no point in your coming.'

'When you land at Miami, a car will b
e
waiting to take you to an hotel for the night. Tomorrow it will pick you up and take you back to the airport to fly to Sarasota. I've decided that, as you've only just passed your driving test—having learnt to drive on the left—it will be better for you to have some practice on quiet roads before going on any main highways.'

'When shall we see you again?' his niece asked him.

'I don't know, but I'll call you regularly to hear how things are going.'

'I wish you were coming with us.'

He answered that with, 'When I do come, I'm expecting to find you a pretty good swimmer. Maybe you can get the boy who cleans the pool to give you some coaching.'

Which means he doesn't have much confidence in my coaching, thought Summer. Perhaps he was right. There were twelve years and many pounds of flesh between her and the slim ten-year-old of whom she remembered her father saying proudly to someone, 'My daughter must have a mermaid in her ancestry. She's the best little swimmer you ever saw.'

They said goodbye to him in the street, beside the taxi which was taking them to Heathrow.

'Take care not to let the sun burn you, the first two weeks,' was his parting advice to Emily. 'Enjoy yourself.' He stooped to kiss her on the cheek and received in return a swift but enthusiastic hug.

To Summer, he said, 'You'll have to be careful, too. Your skin is even fairer than Emily's. The midday sun can be fierce, even at this time of year. Slap on plenty of sun cream. Goodbye.'

'Goodbye.' They shook hands.

Then she turned and stepped inside the taxi.

Emily waved to him through the rear window till she could no longer see him. Summer didn't look back.

As the child turned to settle herself for the first lap of their long journey, she said, 'I hope it isn't
very
long before we see him again.'

Summer was having a final check through her bag to make sure she had the airline tickets, their passports and the American money which James had given her to cover incidental expenses until they reached his home. She gave a non-committal murmur.

Her personal hope was that it would be as long as possible before their next encounter with him. And when they did meet again, she intended to be a different person.

'It's beautiful!
Oh... isn't it beautiful!'

Emily's face was close to the pane and she was craning, enraptured, at the sight of Miami by night; hundreds... thousands...
millions
of lights, some of them in static rows and clusters, some of them moving in streams.

It reminded Summer, peering over her shoulder, of the jewellers' windows in Bond Street. Here were the jewels which had been missing from them; here were the diamond necklaces, the sparkling bracelets, the brooches; all flung down in lavish confusion on a bed of black velvet.

'If this is America—' breathed Emily.

Summer found her throat tight with emotion. She was thinking of some lines by Housman.

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

But she had come again. There it was below her, glittering Welcome. Welcome back.

As she fumbled in her pocket for a tissue, her eyes brimmed and overflowed. Emily, turning to exchange a delighted glance, saw two tears rolling down the older girl's cheeks.

'You're crying,' she exclaimed, in dismay.

'I know. Isn't it silly of me.' Summer was smiling and crying at the same time.

Suddenly Emily's eyes filled with tears of sympathy. She flung her arms round her tutor.

'Don't cry,' she said, in a choked voice. And then: 'Oh, Summer—I do love you.'

'I love you, too,' Summer answered shakily, hugging her.

Their embrace was the first demonstration of the close, sisterly affection which had been building up between them for more than a year. But neither of them was used to displaying their feelings and, drawing apart, both felt a little self-conscious.

'Can you see the airport yet?' Summer asked, to give Emily an excuse to turn back to the window while she herself wiped her eyes and recovered her composure.

'No... not yet. But it can't be far away. We're getting lower every minute.'

As, shading their faces from the light within the aircraft's cabin, they peered at their destination, Summer saw that the dazzle of downtown lights had given place to straight rows of dimmer street lamps illuminating a chequer-board pattern of residential blocks.

All the houses she could see were detached with unfenced gardens round them. Even from the air, the suburbs surrounding Miami looked different from those surrounding London where most of the houses were either built in pairs or in terraces.

After touchdown, the next excitement—instead of having
a
long walk from arrival point to baggage reclaim—was to ride in a vehicle like the London Underground train they had been on yesterday, which glided slowly up a sloping rail to the main part of the airport.

'It's more like a disco than an airport,' said Summer, surprised by the purple carpets and the brilliant pools of light shed by downlighters in the ceiling. She had never been to a disco, but she had heard about them.

They had had a taste of racial intermingling during their brief time in London, the home of large numbers of Indians and West Indians, and smaller communities from most of the world's nations.

Here in Miami there seemed to be an even more striking mixture of races and nationalities. As many travellers seemed to be speaking Spanish as English, and fair-headed people like Summer were outnumbered by dark-haired ones.

The American Immigration officer studied her passport without comment. After looking at Emily's, he fixed her with an expressionless stare, and said, 'So you're Lady Emily Lancaster. How about that?'

If he had said it with a smile, she would have beamed back at him. But Summer could see that she found him alarming.

Before Summer could reassure her, the Immigration officer said, 'Cat got your tongue, Lady Emily Lancaster?'

Emily shook her head. With a glimmer of a nervous smile, she said, 'James says I should call myself Miss Lancaster in America. It's more democratic.

Regardless of the people waiting in line behind them, the officer leaned his elbows on the desk and gazed into her eyes. 'Does he now? And who might James be?'

'He's my American uncle. We're going to spend the winter at his house in Sarasota.'

'Is that so?' Suddenly his face creased in a grin. 'You know something? That sure is a cute British accent.' He straightened again. 'But I guess some of these people'—with a nod at the queue—'would rather go where they're going than stand around listening to you and me having a talk. So'—he tapped her on the head with her passport—'on your way, Miss Emily. Enjoy your trip.'

'Thank you. Goodbye.'

For an instant, as the child gave him her most radiant smile, Summer caught another glimpse of the charmer she was going to be... one day.

'Wasn't he nice?' said Emily, as they moved on to have their luggage checked by Customs.

Soon after emerging into the public concourse, followed by
a
porter with their luggage, they saw
a
man in chauffeur's uniform holding a placard with Roberts/ Lancaster written in large letters on it.

A few minutes later they were in the back of
a
large limousine, sweeping luxuriously past the travellers who were lining up for taxis or climbing aboard buses.