Summer's Awakening (23 page)

Further on, after a résumé of Jobs' private life, she read:
Not long ago, Gardiner paid the London coin dealers, Spink & Son Ltd., £13,000 for a silver head of Tetradrachm from Rhodes dating from about 360 B.C. tie then commissioned a leading New York City jeweler, Nicola Bulgari, to design a pendant setting for the coin. Who was or will be the recipient of this costly bauble is a well-guarded secret.

Although both men have the looks and charisma to be successful with women without the added attraction of their wealth and power, neither has playboy inclinations.

In James Gardiner's private life the keyword is private. Some acquaintances—his close friends are as close-mouthed about him as intimates of Britain's Royal Family are about Queen Elizabeth II—claim that he is a workaholic with no time for personal relationships. Also, Gardiner is on record as despising the permissive manners and morals of the 'Seventies, both sexually and in other spheres.

Close observers of his life over the past five years claim that he has twice been involved in serious if not permanent relationships with women. At one time he was frequently seen at the theater in parties which included Sofia Damaskinos, the six-foot-tall, elegant, Greek-born journalist who was sent to interview him by
Paris Match.
The interview was never filed and soon after Damaskinos moved to Manhattan, saying she had fallen in love with the city.

Another name linked with his—

At this point her concentration on the article was broken by the arrival of the Antonios, coming for their evening
dip
in the jacuzzi and pausing on the way to talk to her.

At her second Weight Watchers meeting, Summer weighed five pounds less than the week before. When her loss was applauded by the other members, she felt a glow of achievement she had never experienced before.

After the meeting, Hal Cochran walked to her car with her.

'Did you find it difficult to stay on programme?' he asked her.

'No, not at all. In fact, I've been eating more this week than when I was dieting on my own. I haven't had breakfast in years—I was never hungry in the morning. But now that I
have
to eat one of the choices on the programme, I don't feel as hungry later.'

'That's exactly my experience. I used to go to work on a few cups of coffee and not eat till mid-morning when I'd have a hamburger or something. Eleanor says that most overweight people skip breakfast. It's half their trouble.'

'What kind of work do you do, Hal?'

'I'm in the construction business... building condos for all the people who want a place in the sun. Say, instead of standing around, why don't we have coffee someplace? You don't have to be home right away, do you?'

'I shouldn't be too late. If I'm not back when they expect me, they may start to worry.'

'Why not call them? Say you're having coffee with another Weight Watcher and you'll be half an hour later?'

'Yes, I could do that,' she agreed.

The fact that he had suggested it, and added a time limit, allayed her qualms about accepting his invitation. After all, she didn't know anything about him except that he had a pleasant manner and a sense of humour. But some very unpleasant people could possess those attributes.

'Which way do you go when you leave here?' he asked her.

She told him.

'That's my way,' said Hal. 'You know where McDonald's is? The fast-food place with the big yellow M sign? Let's go there.'

A little while later, when she joined him at a table in McDonald's after making her call, he said, 'Who are the people who would worry if you were late home? Your family?'

'No—Mrs Hardy and Emily. Mrs Hardy is my employer's housekeeper, and Emily is his thirteen-year-old niece whom I teach. She has health problems which have prevented her going to school.'

Hal stirred his coffee, although he hadn't put sugar in it, or saccharine.

He said, 'When I told you I was in construction, maybe you thought I was one of the bosses. I'm not. I'm strictly blue collar. My job is laying tiles on roofs.'

It was obvious to her that, in his mind, a tiler was someone a teacher might not want to know. It was an unexpected attitude to find in a country where social divisions were supposed to be looser than in Europe. It made her wonder if, at some time in the past, he had been given the brush off by a girl with snobbish ideas.

She said, 'It must be hot work in summer when, so everyone tells me, the heat here is really broiling.'

'Yeah, I guess so, but you get used to it. Most jobs have some drawback. I'd sooner fry than freeze the way they do up in New England and places like that.'

'How is your mother getting on? Where is she in hospital?'

Hearing about his mother's progress and explaining her own lack of relations took up the rest of their half an hour together. In the parking lot they said goodnight, and for about half a mile he drove behind her until their ways home diverged.

'It's nice that you've made a friend,' said Mrs Hardy, when she got home.

The housekeeper was keeping Emily company in the little upstairs sitting room which at night was a cosier place to sit than the large living room downstairs.

Summer agreed. She guessed that Mrs Hardy assumed her friend was another woman, and she didn't correct this misapprehension. She had a feeling Mary Hardy might not approve of her making friends with a man.

The next time Eleanor weighed her, Summer had lost another four pounds. It was the last meeting before Christmas and the lecturer's talk to the members was about ways to withstand the temptations of the festive season.

At the end of the meeting, Hal said, 'How about a coffee, Summer?'

She hadn't been sure he would ask her and had hoped he wouldn't because there was a programme on TV which she wanted to watch. But when he did ask her, she didn't like to refuse in case he thought it was because of his blue-collar job.

At McDonald's, he produced a small package in Christmas wrapping paper.

'It's not much,' he said, when she thanked him.

It hadn't occurred to her to bring him a present, even a small one, and she was embarrassed by his gift.

'Shall I open it now, or keep it till Christmas Day?'

'You can open it now if you like.' Clearly he wanted her to.

She read the message on the gift tag—
To Summer: Merry Christmas: Hal
—before she undid the wrapping. Inside was a small cardboard box papered to look like an old-fashioned well with a roof and a bucket dangling on a chain.

'It's a wishing well, made in England,' he told her.

Inside the box was a pottery thimble, shaped and painted like a well.

'It's... darling,' she said. 'Useful, too. I do quite a lot of needlework. Thank you very much, Hal.'

When she got home, she put it away in a drawer. She was grateful for the kindness of Hal's thought while disliking the object he had chosen. It was an ugly little thing which didn't fit her thimble finger and was too clumsily made to be of practical use. When she sewed on a button, or did needlepoint, she wore an antique silver thimble bought for twenty-five pence at a village jumble sale.

She and Emily had already bought Christmas presents for Mrs Hardy, the Antonios and Skip, and the next day they spent the morning in one of the big shopping malls where they separated to hunt for
a
surprise present for each other.

Lord and Lady Edgedale had stopped filling
a
Christmas stocking for Emily several years earlier. Summer felt that, this year, it would be fun to revive the custom. The shops were full of delightful stocking sniffers and she had more money to spend on the person dearest to her.

Going to bed on Christmas Eve, she tapped 0630 on the miniature keyboard fitted to the wall
by
her bed. She wanted to be up early to swim extra laps in the pool to work off the one glass of Mrs Hardy's egg nog she had allowed herself during the evening. She had resisted the mince pies.

She didn't expect to lose any weight this week, but she was determined to maintain the loss made so far; and somehow the thought of all the members of her class facing the same temptations had made it easier to say no to the hot, fragrant pies the rest of the household had eaten during the evening.

Promptly at six-thirty next morning the first quiet notes of the violin concerto which James Gardiner liked to be woken by broke the silence of her spacious bedroom.

She was lying with her eyes closed, listening to
a
glorious cadenza played by a single violin, when she became aware of someone else in the room. Opening her eyes she found Emily standing by the bed, holding the scarlet felt stocking which Summer had bought to contain a selection of little presents.

'I did knock, but you didn't hear because of the music,' Emily said. 'Happy Christmas!' She sat down on the bed and, as her tutor sat up, leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

Summer gave her a hug. 'Happy Christmas, darling.' Unconsciously, she used the Christmas morning greeting her mother had always given her. 'Haven't you opened your stocking yet?'

'Yes, I opened it the minute I woke up. This is yours,' said Emily. 'Mrs Hardy made me promise not to creep in a minute before half past six. I thought you'd still be asleep.'

'A stocking for me? Emily, what a lovely surprise.'

The child beamed. 'And there's nothing in it you mustn't have—no chocolate money or sugar mice,' she assured her.

It was the beginning of the most convivial Christmas Day since Summer's childhood. The Antonios were away for a week, spending Christmas with their son and his family and New Year with their daughter and her husband. But Mrs Hardy's son was in the Navy, overseas, and she would have been on her own but for Emily's and her tutor's arrival.

'Which I shouldn't have minded, but it's nicer to have you two here,' she said, smiling, as they ate pink grapefruit in the sunny breakfast room on the inland side of the house.

'If only James were here, instead of in Switzerland,' said Emily. 'Do you think he'll ring up this morning?'

'He may,' said Summer. 'But don't be too disappointed if he doesn't. He's a guest in someone else's house and that could make it difficult.'

For her own part, she felt the day would be more enjoyable for his absence. She couldn't have relaxed had he been with them. And she felt sure he would be bored out of his mind by a Christmas Day spent with three females, unless they were of the calibre of Sofia Damaskinos, or the other woman mentioned in the
Newsweek
article.

After helping Mary Hardy to clear the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher, they went to the living room to open the parcels piled beneath the Christmas tree.

To their surprise, these included a number of presents from James. He hadn't bought them himself; that would have been impossible. But he had sent his housekeeper a list of suggested gifts, and some cards on which, in a bold and legible hand, he had written appropriate messages.

On the card attached to the parcel for Summer, the message was a conventional
With good wishes for an enjoyable Christmas,
and the present he had chosen was a recent non-fiction bestseller.

For his niece there were many presents, but none of them unduly extravagant. In addition to several books, there was a Frisbee, a pocket calculator, a Garfield tee-shirt, a special pen for italic calligraphy and an inexpensive camera.