“Will you be away long?” I asked.
“That rather depends,” Peter answered. “You see, Samantha, I am going away because of you!”
“Because of me?” I echoed in surprise.
He looked away from me and I thought that he seemed very tense.
“The fact is, Samantha, I’ve fallen in love with you.”
“Is there anything wrong in that?” I asked.
“Yes, as far as you are concerned,” he replied.
My eyes widened and he said still without looking at me,
“You see, Samantha, I love you because I think you are the most wonderful adorable girl I have ever met in my life and I would give everything I possess to be able to ask you to marry me.”
I drew in my breath, but I really didn’t know what to say.
“But I can’t ask you,” Peter went on, “because it wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“Why not?” I enquired.
“Because, Samantha, I was wounded in the War,” Peter said, “not very seriously, but the doctors say it is very unlikely that I could ever have children.”
“Oh – Peter – ” I murmured.
“I’ve never worried about it particularly,” Peter went on, “because until now I have never wanted to marry anybody. But you are perfect in every way, Samantha, and it wouldn’t be fair for you to miss what I know for a woman is perhaps the most important experience in her life – having a baby.”
“Are – you sure they – were right?” I asked hesitatingly.
“Quite sure about that,” Peter said. “That’s not to say that I couldn’t make love to you, but I couldn’t face the day, Samantha, when you would reproach me because you would feel that I had deprived you of something that is every woman’s right. So I am going away.”
“Oh – Peter – Peter!” I cried.
It was all so unexpected, something I had never dreamt might happen and I didn’t know what to say, I could only put out my hands towards him.
He took them in his and raised them to his lips one after the other.
Then he rose to his feet.
“You are very beautiful, Samantha,” he said, “not only because of your lovely face, but you are nice, kind and completely unspoilt. I hope that one day we will be able to be friends again, but in the meantime I shall pass through a very unpleasant hell on my own until I can become used to not seeing you.”
“But – you mustn’t go away – like this – ” I began.
He put two fingers on my lips to stop me speaking.
“Don’t say it, Samantha,” he said. “We both know that I am doing the right thing, for while I’m in love with you, you are not in love with me. Just take care of yourself and I only hope the young man you are breaking your heart over is worthy of you.”
I was absolutely astonished at this, because I had never mentioned David to him and I had no idea that Peter knew I was in love or, as he said, breaking my heart.
He walked towards the door and then he turned suddenly.
He took me in his arms and held me very close to him. I thought that he would kiss my lips, but instead he kissed my forehead and before I could say anything or even hold onto him, he opened the door.
I stood where he had left me and then I heard his car start up. I tried to realise that Peter had gone out of my life for ever.
I was so sorry for him and wished that I could have told him how much he meant to me! I knew that now he had gone away there would be an empty place in my life and there was no one else at hand to fill it.
For the next few days I tried to forget Peter by going out with anyone who asked me.
I danced at the Savoy, at the Berkeley, at the Embassy Club on Thursday night and at the Kit-Kat.
Every place seemed to be full of the same people dancing to the same music and, it seemed to me, saying the same things over and over again.
“You’re looking bored, Samantha,” a young man said to me one night and I thought perhaps that I was beginning to look like all the other fashionable women. I wondered if David would think that an improvement or not.
Now that Peter had gone I had to start all over again finding someone to teach me about love.
I would sometimes look round the restaurant or the Club and, instead of finding the men attractive, I could only compare them with David and think how stupid and ordinary they were.
None of them had his presence, his personality or the vitality that seemed to exude from him, so that the moment he walked into a room people noticed him.
I was at a party at the Savoy one evening. It was a rather noisy tiresome party. Several of the men had had too much to drink and ragged about during the cabaret, which I always think is very bad manners.
They also danced rather rowdily, which was not only embarrassing but worried me in case my dress was torn.
The party was given for a very rich Argentine. We had sat down twenty-four to dinner and then, after the theatres closed, other friends kept arriving to join us.
I cannot remember how I was invited – I think it must have been through Giles. It was the sort of party I hate and I was wondering how soon I could slip away and go home when three men arrived.
Two of them were nondescript and looked like all the other men present, but the third was definitely different.
He was dark and very good-looking, almost outstandingly so and the moment he appeared everyone seemed to wake up and become interested.
“Victor!” a woman cried. “Where have you been, darling? I haven’t seen you for ages!”
Our host also greeted him most effusively and, as he sat down at the table, it seemed as if the whole tempo had risen and everyone was talking animatedly and excitedly all at once.
“Who is that?” I asked the man sitting next to me.
“Don’t you know Victor Fitzroy?” he replied. “I thought everyone knew Victor.”
“Everyone but me,” I answered.
“Well, he is certainly somebody you ought to meet,” my dinner partner said quite seriously. “I can’t understand how you haven’t already read about him in the newspapers.”
“I never have time to read the gossip columns,” I smiled.
“I was talking about the headlines!” he said. “I always tell Victor he hogs them so that none of us can get a look in.”
“What does he do?” I asked.
“It would be easier to tell you what he doesn’t do,” my informant replied. “He has just beaten the air speed record from Cape Town to London. He has won all sorts of motor car racing trophies and is one of the best amateur riders in England.”
“Obviously a very talented gentleman!” I laughed.
“He is also enormously rich! However, if you don’t appreciate Victor Fitzroy for himself, you won’t appreciate anybody.”
A few minutes later I had the chance to judge, for it seemed that Victor had noticed me across the table since our host brought him over to introduce him.
“Come and dance,” Victor suggested and I was delighted to agree.
I was rather intrigued by a man about whom another man talked with such enthusiasm and I found very quickly that my dinner partner had not exaggerated.
Victor had tremendous charm, almost too much in a way. It was overwhelming.
He didn’t pay me the usual compliments, he just said,
“The moment I saw you I knew why I was in such a hurry to get back to England last week.”
“Why do you want to fly so quickly?” I asked.
He laughed at that.
“I hate wasting time,” he said. “If I want something, I want it at once.”
He looked at me as he spoke with a sort of speculative look in his eyes.
Then he said,
“Tell me about yourself.”
“I expect you have already been told that I am a Giles Bariatinsky model?”
“I am not interested in the advertising slogans but in what lies behind them.”
He held me really close to him
and said,
“You are very thin.”
“I’m sorry if I disappoint you,” I answered.
“You don’t,” he said. “I am really wondering if you are real or if you will disappear at the touch of a hand.”
“I think that depends on whose hand,” I answered.
I realised I was flirting in a manner I was seldom able to do with other men.
There was something effervescent about Victor. He made one feel gay and amusing. He made one sparkle, just as he sparkled himself.
We danced and danced until he said,
“Let’s go – my car is outside.”
“Without saying goodbye and expressing our thanks?”
“Our host should thank you. People must pay you to sit at their dull and boring dinner parties and look beautiful. You are far more effective than floral decorations.”
“Thank you,” I laughed.
I did as Victor wanted and walked out of the Savoy without saying goodbye.
I realised later that it was the way people expected Victor Fitzroy to behave. They were grateful if he accepted their hospitality, even for a few moments.
He had a long low expensive sports car outside the Savoy and we raced down the Strand through Trafalgar Square and passed Buckingham Palace at such a speed that I was only surprised that we weren’t stopped by the police.
“Do you really want to go home?” Victor asked.
“I’m afraid I must,” I answered. “I am a working girl and I get into trouble if I am late in the morning.”
“I will let you go only on condition that you promise to dine with me tomorrow night.”
“I would love to,” I answered.
“I have a feeling we are going to see a lot of each other, Samantha,” Victor said, “so like you, I won’t waste time on unnecessary preliminaries.”
“Are you trying to say that I should have refused your first invitation?” I asked.
“I am telling you,” he answered, “that I would not have allowed you to do so.”
When we reached my flat, I was ready to step out quickly as I always did, but I found it difficult to open the car door,
Victor helped me out and took my keys from me.
He opened both doors and then he walked into my flat before I could stop him.
I stood looking at him speculatively, then he put his arms round me and said,
“You are very lovely, Samantha!”
He kissed me before I could move or make any effort to prevent him, but surprisingly it didn’t shock or frighten me.
Then as suddenly as he had taken me in his arms, Victor let me go.
“I shall be looking forward to tomorrow, my sweet,” he said and left me.
I felt as if I was in a whirl. I didn’t know quite what I thought or didn’t think. It was just as if I had been swept off my feet and carried along on a tide over which 1 had no control.
It was not an unpleasant feeling, it was rather fun, and I told myself as I locked the door and turned out the light in the sitting room that I liked Victor.
I was looking forward to tomorrow evening.
‘Tonight,’ I thought, ‘Instead of thinking of David, I’ll think about Victor!’
The following night I took an extra amount of trouble, choosing one of my prettiest dresses. I had my hair done at lunchtime and I was ready a quarter of an hour before I expected Victor to arrive.
I might have known that when he did come it would be somewhat flamboyantly.
There was the noise of his car outside and then he seemed, as I opened the door, to sweep into the flat like a boisterous wind.
He was smiling and I thought he really was one of the best-looking men I had ever seen.
He put his hands on my shoulders and held me away from him.
“Let me look at you,” he said. “I thought last night that I really had dreamt you. No one could be quite so beautiful.”
“What do you think now?” I asked.
“I am sure you are a fake,” he said, “but I’ve got to find out for certain.”
“That’s not very complimentary,” I said accusingly.
“You’ve had enough compliments,” he said, “but, just to spoil you, I will say you are entrancing and I would much rather kiss you than have that drink you haven’t offered me.”
He held me close to him and kissed my lips.
“I’m sorry,” I said when he released me, “but I haven’t any drink.”
“Are all your boyfriends teetotallers?” he asked.
“I haven’t any.”
“You can hardly expect me to believe that.”
“The men I do know,” I replied, “are not allowed into my flat.”
I picked up my wrap as I spoke and moved towards the door.
Victor looked round.
“The setting is not really worthy of the jewel,” he said.
I felt I ought to have been angry with him for being critical, but one didn’t get angry with Victor over small things.
“It is what I like.”
“And that’s all that matters,” he replied. “At least you are not pretentious, Samantha.”
“I hope not.”
He led me to the car and we roared away to the West End. A table had been kept for him at the Embassy Club where, of course, he knew everybody.
People came up and talked to him, he waved to his friends across the room and it was rather like being out with a film star.
In between the interruptions he made love to me amusingly and with that quite irresistible charm that made me certain that I should not to believe a word of it.
But he was so skilful at it that I found him fascinating.
From the Embassy we went on to a nightclub where there was an extraordinarily amusing cabaret and then to a small, dark, seductive cellar where one danced on a glass floor lit from beneath and sat at small velvet-covered sofa tables, which were very intimate.
Victor talked to me beguilingly and in a manner that in some way healed the wound to my pride.
David had not only made me miserably unhappy he had left me humble and insecure, deflated and insignificant.
I can’t explain what Victor did except that I felt as if he lifted me up out of the gutter and placed me on a pedestal.
I felt young and gay again, I felt that the world was not a place of misery and oppression, but of laughter and sunshine.
We talked and danced and it was nearly dawn before he drove me home.
Once again he came into the flat and kissed me more passionately than he had done the night before and left me just as suddenly, while I was still willing for him to go on kissing me.
It was the next night, after we had been to the theatre and were having supper at the Savoy, that he said,
“I’ve a suggestion to make to you, Samantha.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I want to go to Paris tomorrow morning,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
For a moment I could think of nothing to say and then I knew that this was what I had been waiting for – what I had envisaged would happen sooner or later and it would be stupid for me to refuse.
I liked Victor, I liked him enormously. I loved being with him. I thought I had never laughed or enjoyed anything so much as I had these last two nights.
But Paris – !
Then as I thought about it, Victor put his hand over mine.
“Say yes, Samantha,” he said. “I want you to come with me and I am not going to take ‘no’ for an answer.”
Reflection 21
I stopped talking and waited for David to say something, but there was only silence and after a moment, because I didn’t want to discuss what I had been saying, I went on with my story.
It was difficult to explain what I felt as I drove down to Croydon Aerodrome with Victor.
I was excited at the thought of going to Paris. At the same time I was conscious of a funny sick feeling inside me, which I always have before a big party.
I loved David and this was the only way I could make him love me again and find me desirable, as he had when we had first known each other.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised how boring I must have been to him understanding only about half of what he was saying to me and having no knowledge of anything outside the narrow world of Little Poolbrook.
I felt, although it was only a drop in the ocean, that I had learnt a little since he went to America, both from reading and from Peter, and now here was Victor, so charming, so gay, to teach me about love.
I kept telling myself that I was very lucky. Nevertheless, as the day wore on the sick feeling seemed to intensify even though I tried not to think about it.
It was very exciting when we reached Croydon to find that we were to travel to Paris in Victor’s own Puss-Moth, which was outside the hangar awaiting us when we arrived.
All the officials seemed very impressed with Victor and congratulated him on winning the race from Cape Town to London and I could see that the mechanics looked at him with admiration.
It was the first time I had ever flown and once we were in the air, Victor turned to me with a smile and said,
“You’re not frightened, are you, Samantha?”
“Not now,” I answered, “although I couldn’t help being afraid that you would never get this big bird off the ground.”
He laughed at that and took one hand off the controls to pat mine and say,
“You’re quite safe with me and I cannot imagine anything more fun than being up in the clouds with you.”
It was fun for me too and the world seemed far away, almost like a child’s toy, as we flew over England and then over the Channel.
The aeroplane was noisy so it wasn’t easy to talk, and when we flew into the clouds there wasn’t much to see.
It was only when we were coming down that I felt frightened again, the world seemed at first far away and then came towards us in a rush and I couldn’t see why we wouldn’t hit it with a tremendous bang and both be killed.
But Victor brought the Moth down smoothly and we only bumped a little before he brought it to a standstill.
Say Yes Samantha Page 14
