Say Yes Samantha Read online

  I gave a sob and went on,

  “That is why you must go away. I can’t see you any more – I couldn’t go through all this unhappiness again – Perhaps one day I shall manage to improve myself, but it is obviously going to take time.”

  Again there was silence.

  Then David said,

  “Do you still love me, Samantha?”

  “You know I do,” I answered. “I’ve tried to explain that I was doing all this only because I thought it would make me able to please you, but nothing seemed to go – right.”

  I sighed.

  “I suppose I’m just made differently from other people or else it’s because of my upbringing. I don’t know what it is – but I can’t help it! I did my very – very best and I failed – that’s all there is to it.”

  The tears had come into my eyes while I was speaking and now they were running down my cheeks, but I thought David wouldn’t realise it because it was dark. I tried to keep my voice steady, but there was a sort of quiver and a break in it.

  “I have a great deal to say to you, Samantha,” David said at last, “but it’s very late and I think you ought to go to sleep.”

  I would have protested but he went on,

  “You’ve been through a lot this evening. I can understand that seeing me was a shock and the burglar was an upset that must never happen again. Now that I’m here and no one can hurt you, I want you to close your eyes and try to sleep.”

  He spoke almost coaxingly as if to a child and then he went on,

  “Tomorrow I have not only so much to tell you but also something to show you.”

  “To show me?” I asked.

  “In the country,” he answered, “and I know you like going to the country.”

  “What about the studio?”

  “I’ll fix that with Bariatinsky,” he answered.

  “He won’t like it if I take a day off,” I said. “I was away for so long and there is a lot of work for me to do.”

  “I think he’ll understand when I speak to him,” David said.

  I was rather doubtful, because I know how furious Giles can be if any of us are off work when he has special orders, but I suddenly felt too tired to argue.

  I suppose David was right. What with the shock of seeing him and the burglar and the strain of telling him what had happened with Peter and Victor, it was suddenly difficult to keep my eyes open.

  “Give me your hand,” David said and obediently I put out my hand in the dark.

  He took it in his, then he lifted it to his lips.

  “Goodnight, my darling,” he said softly.

  I felt a sudden thrill run through me – it was the way David always made me feel, which no one else had ever been able to do.

  It was what I had missed with Victor, when he kissed me. It was what no other man could give me!

  Instinctively my fingers must have tightened on David’s.

  He kissed my hand again and then he deliberately laid it down in front of me on top of the bedclothes.

  “Go to sleep,” he said again.

  Surprisingly, although there were so many things I wanted to think about, I obeyed him.

  Reflection 23

  I woke up thinking that I had dreamt of David and then I heard the sound of rushing water.

  I thought for a moment that I must be near a river and then I realised that someone was running the bath and I knew it was David.

  It was true then what had happened last night! He really had brought me home and, because I had been so frightened after the burglar had struck me, he had stayed the night on my bed!

  It seemed impossible! I turned to look and saw the pillow had a dent in it and the eiderdown was thrown back. There was also his dinner jacket over the chair and his shoes on the floor beside it.

  I was trying to remember exactly what he had said and what had happened when he came out of the bathroom.

  “You have the smallest bath I have ever tried to bathe in,” he said. “For one moment I thought you would have to send for a plumber to gouge me out of it!”

  “It’s big enough for me,” I smiled.

  “That’s why I’m running your bath,” he said slowly. “Hurry, Samantha, we have a long way to go.”

  He smiled at me.

  “You look very pretty in the morning,” he said and added,

  “While you are getting dressed, I’m going to do some telephoning. There are quite a lot of things I have to arrange. And what about breakfast? I see you have some eggs.”

  “Do you like them scrambled?” I asked.

  “I’m not particular,” he answered. Then he went into the sitting room, closing the door behind him.

  I jumped out of bed, had my bath and started to dress.

  While I did so I put the coffee on, and when I was ready in a Chanel-type green suit, which I had managed to buy very cheaply when I first came back to London, I started cooking the eggs.

  I remembered that David had a large appetite and fortunately I had bought enough to last me to the end of the week.

  I toasted some bread and put butter and marmalade on a tray and carried it into the sitting room.

  David was just putting down the receiver and I saw that the chairs were the right way up and he had picked up a number of ornaments that the burglar had thrown off the mantelpiece and from the top of the shelves.

  It always seems to me extraordinary that people want to break pretty things. There’s something quite horrible and destructive about it, like pulling off butterflies’ wings.

  Perhaps it’s because they feel rebellious or jealous that other people should have things they don’t have themselves.

  There was a small gate-legged table in the sitting room on which I had my own meals. David opened it for me and I told him where to find a tablecloth and I put down the tray.

  I went back to fetch the coffee and we sat down just like an old married couple to eat our breakfast.

  The sitting room looked untidy but not half as bad as it had seemed last night immediately after the burglar had left.

  “Will you bring a few things for the night?” David asked. “I’m going to take you to stay with my cousin.”

  I looked surprised and he said,

  “She is over sixty and will be a very efficient chaperone, I assure you.”

  His eyes twinkled and I knew that he was teasing me, but not in the least unkindly.

  “I would like to meet her,” I said. “What’s her name?”

  “It’s Kathleen Dunne,” he answered. “She has never married and is rather given to good works. You two should get along well together.”

  “I think you are being unkind to me,” I protested.

  “Am I?” David asked. “I didn’t mean to, Samantha, I want you to be very happy.”

  There was something in the way that he said the last words that made my heart give a silly leap.

  He stood up from the table and said,

  “Come on. We must get going. I shall have to stop at my flat on the way because I can hardly arrive in the country wearing a dinner jacket. I’ve rung my servant and told him to have everything ready so that I shall not keep you waiting more than a few minutes.”

  I gathered from this that he didn’t intend to ask me to go into the flat and I was glad.

  I knew it would have reminded me of the last time I had been there and how we had fought with each other and David had won the battle by completely annihilating me!

  I was determined not to think of what had happened after that or how unhappy I had been.

  David had come back again into my life and I tried to tell myself it was wonderful just to be with him, to know that he was beside me and that there was no use in thinking too much about the future.

  At the same time nothing could prevent my feeling a thrill when he took my arm, when he helped me into the Bentley and when he looked at me in just his own particular manner which made me feel breathless and excited.

  ‘What is it about being in
love,’ I asked myself, ‘that makes one feel so totally and completely different from the way one feels with anyone else?’

  There was no answer to this question, so I snuggled down in the seat and thought how marvellous it was to be driving beside David again and going with him to the country.

  I wondered what his cousin was like and hoped that she would not disapprove of me.

  Even in my green suit with a plain cloche hat over my red hair I knew that I still looked exotic and not a bit the type of plain, sensible country girl who I felt would be the sort of young woman David’s cousin would think suitable for him.

  We arrived at David’s flat and, having parked the car outside, he said,

  “I’ll be just as quick as I can, so don’t run away until I get back.”

  “I won’t do that,” I promised.

  He ran up the steps and I wondered whether anyone would think it was strange seeing him return at ten o’clock in the morning still in his dinner jacket.

  Then I thought if anyone did see him they would be quite certain he had spent the night with some charming lady. Perhaps someone like Lady Bettine.

  But David had spent the night with me and I wondered if anyone would ever believe that he had only kissed my hand although we lay side by side in the darkness.

  I knew that Melanie and Hortense wouldn’t believe it and they would have been frightfully envious of my being alone all night with David Durham, whom they admired enormously.

  ‘Does he really want to marry me?’ I asked myself.

  That was what he had said, but in a voice that didn’t sound quite like him. There was nothing authoritative about it as there had been in the past when he was telling me what I should and should not do.

  It was almost as if he was pleading with me and yet I could not believe that where David was concerned.

  Almost before I had time to sort it all out, David came back. He was carrying a suitcase and was dressed in grey flannel trousers with a tweed jacket.

  He looked terribly attractive and, although he appeared countrified, I knew one thing, that no one could ever mistake David for anything but a gentleman.

  He jumped into the car, smiled at me and said,

  “You are still here. I was rather apprehensive.”

  “What did Giles say?” I asked. “I had really forgotten about him.”

  “He grumbled a bit,” David answered, “but I think he realises that I have a prior claim where you are concerned.”

  “Have you?” I asked.

  “You know I have,” he answered almost fiercely.

  I couldn’t think of an answer to that, so I looked ahead and said nothing.

  David put a small flat parcel into my lap.

  “A present for you,” he said. “I have collected quite a lot of things one way and another that I want to give you, but some of them may have to wait until Christmas.”

  “Oh, not as long as that!” I exclaimed.

  He smiled.

  “Open what I have brought you now, to start with at any rate.”

  I undid the ribbon with which the parcel was tied and opened the tissue paper. Inside was a scarf, one of the fashionable ones that all the most elegant women wore and I saw it was green and printed with a floral pattern and lovebirds.

  “Oh, thank you!” I said. “It will exactly match what I am wearing.”

  “That’s what I thought,” David said.

  I put it round my neck and felt very smart.

  I had never been able to afford all the accessories that really make an outfit, however elegant it may be by itself. Giles had provided me with the essentials, but I hadn’t felt justified in spending extra money on the scarves, handbags and gloves that I had often longed for.

  “Thank you,” I said again. “Thank you very much! Do you really mean you have some other presents for me?”

  “I bought quite a lot of items in New York, the first time I was there,” David answered. “I kept seeing things that made me think of you and, as the film was going rather well, I thought I might be extravagant.”

  “I want to hear all about it,” I said.

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” David answered. “I’m concerned now with driving very fast so that we shall be there in time for lunch.”

  I thought that meant we would be lunching with his cousin and I felt a little disappointed, as I had hoped that we would go to an inn where we could talk.

  But I knew that David had planned the day and I didn’t wish to interfere. All I wanted was to relish every moment that we were together.

  I realised now just how much I had missed him and how it really had been like losing an arm or a leg because he had not been there.

  I knew as we drove along that I could never marry Victor, although he is actually better-looking than David. He is also gayer, more amusing and of course richer – but nothing that Victor could say or do, even though I like him very much, could affect me as one glance or one touch from David did.

  I felt as though I was throbbing all over with a kind of inexpressible joy just because he was beside me. Everything seemed full of sunshine and the Bentley was enchanted as it carried us along in a little world of our own where no one could interrupt us.

  We stopped for petrol and, while the tank was being filled up, David looked in through the open window on my side and said,

  “Are you happy, Samantha?”

  Our eyes met and I thought he knew that there was no need for me to answer him.

  “I am very happy!” I answered in a low voice.

  “I can hardly believe you are here,” he said, “after – ”

  He didn’t finish the sentence as the man said, “it’s full, sir,” and he turned away to pay for the petrol.

  We drove on again and now we were out of the traffic and moving along country roads. I didn’t ask David where we were going. I felt almost absurdly that anywhere would be Paradise as long as he was there.

  Vaguely I knew we were somewhere in Oxfordshire. The countryside was very beautiful.

  David drove very fast and it must have been a quarter to one o’clock when we turned in at some drive gates and in front of us was an avenue of oak trees.

  “Is this where your cousin lives?” I asked.

  “No, she lives about two miles away,” he said. “This is a house I want you to see and where we are lunching.”

  As he spoke, the drive came to an end and there in front of us was one of the loveliest old houses I had ever seen.

  I knew from what Peter had taught me that it was early Elizabethan and might once have been a Priory.

  The red bricks had mellowed with age until they seemed almost to glow. The windows were gabled and there were twisting chimney pots, almost like something out of a Fairytale, standing high above the roof.

  “It’s lovely!” I exclaimed.

  “I thought you would think so,” David answered.

  There were smooth green lawns, old yew hedges and flowerbeds, which were a riot of gloriously coloured dahlias.

  We drove up to the front door and David said,

  “Will you wait here a moment, Samantha? I just want to check that everything is arranged for us to see the house.”

  I wondered who owned it and I thought that anyone who lived in such perfect surroundings was very lucky indeed.

  Far in the distance I could see blue hills and all round the house there were trees, some of them very old, which must have stood there for centuries.

  David came back smiling.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Come in. There’s a cold lunch waiting for us, but we have to help ourselves. I don’t suppose you mind that.”

  “No, of course not,” I answered.

  He suggested that I might want to wash my hands and told me to go upstairs.

  “There is a door at the top of the landing,” he said, “and a bathroom next to it.”

  The stairs were very old with bannisters of carved oak and newels of strangely fashioned animals at
each turn.

  The hall was panelled and on the walls there were portraits, obviously ancestors, of pretty women and distinguished looking men, most of them in uniform.

  The bedroom was charming, low-ceilinged with a bow window overlooking a formal garden, which contained a sundial.

  There was a four-poster bed with curtains of blue velvet and the room smelt of pot pourri, which made me feel homesick because it reminded me of the one Mummy had made from the roses and lavender in our garden.

  When I went downstairs, David was waiting for me in the hall.

  “I’m going to show you the house after lunch,” he said, “but I think we will eat first because I’m hungry.”

  “I’m afraid the breakfast I gave you wasn’t very adequate.”

  “You did your best, but I am a growing man!”

  We laughed at that and then he took me into the dining room, which was also panelled, and had heavy oak beams running across the ceiling and a Medieval fireplace.

  There was a long refectory table with two places laid at the end of it and on the sideboard a collection of dishes.

  There was cold ham and chicken mayonnaise with a delicious salad to go with it and for pudding there was apple meringue, which I had not eaten for years.

  “I expect the apples are out of the garden,” I remarked to David.

  “I am sure they are,” David answered. ‘They didn’t know we were coming until I telephoned at breakfast time and there certainly wouldn’t have been time to go to the shops.”

  “Why? Is the village far from here?” I asked.

  “Nearly two miles,” he answered.

  “I see you know this place well.”

  “It belonged to one of my relations,” he replied. ‘That’s why I wanted you to see it.”

  “I think it is one of the most attractive houses I have ever seen,” I told him.

  There was white wine to drink with our lunch and a Stilton cheese, which David enjoyed more than the apple meringue.

  When we had finished he said,

  “Now, Samantha, I want to show you the house.”

  “Was your relative who lived here called Durham?” I asked.

  “No,” David answered. “The name was Wycombe – Lord Wycombe.”