Say Yes Samantha Read online

  But I was too nervous of giving him the wrong answer to reply. When I didn’t say anything he gave a little laugh, held me tighter and said,

  “Never mind. You are throwing me a challenge to discover your secrets for myself, and that is exactly what I want to do.”

  We went back to the table and talked, or at least he did, until there was practically no one left in the restaurant.

  So he paid the bill and we went outside and climbed into his Bentley.

  “Where do you want to go now?” he asked.

  “I think I ought to go to bed,” I answered. “I have a lot of work to do tomorrow morning.”

  I said it reluctantly because the last thing I wanted was to leave David Durham. But I expected that he too had been busy all day and I knew it was wiser for me to leave when he was still wanting me to stay than for him later to long to be rid of me.

  “Where do you live?” he asked.

  I gave him the address in South Kensington.

  “You have a flat?” he enquired.

  “No,” I answered. “I live in a boarding house.”

  “Can I come in and have a goodnight drink?”

  “No, you can’t,” I replied. “Mrs. Simpson has very strict rules and one is that we must not invite a man into the lounge after ten o’clock.”

  “I wasn’t particularly interested in the lounge,” David replied.

  He spoke in a tone of voice that sounded as if he meant me to laugh, but I didn’t really see that it was funny.

  After we had driven a little way, I realised that we were down by the river. He drove along the Embankment, then stopped between two streetlights.

  There was the water on one side of us and trees on the other. It was very quiet.

  “Why are we stopping here?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. Instead he put his arm round the back of the seat and pulled me towards him. I was so surprised that I made no effort to stop him and then his mouth was on mine.

  It was the first time I had been kissed and for one second I thought it was disappointing.

  His lips seemed hard and not what I had expected – then something wonderful happened inside me.

  I can’t really explain what it was like. It was so strange and yet so utterly and completely marvellous.

  It was like feeling very warm and weak and sort of melting away. Then it became a kind of thrill that went on and on! It was so exciting, so absolutely, unbelievably lovely that I couldn’t have moved even if I had wanted to.

  I had never known I could feel like that!

  I had no idea that a kiss was all the beautiful thoughts and feelings one had ever had rolled into one.

  It was like looking at a perfect view, being utterly happy and at the same time feeling fireworks going off inside one.

  It’s no use trying to explain. It must be, I thought, what people meant by ecstasy, a word I had never understood before.

  Then, when I wanted David to go on kissing me for ever, he suddenly took his arm away, started up the car without saying a word and drove me to the boarding house so quickly that the Bentley seemed to skid round the corners.

  When we arrived there, I just sat rather stupidly looking at him.

  He put his hand over mine and said in what I thought was a strange voice,

  “Thank you, Samantha. I will pick you up tomorrow evening at eight o’clock.”

  He jumped out of his side of the car, walked round, opened my door and took my arm to help me up the steps.

  He rang the bell and for once the old porter opened the door quickly.

  I walked in and as I did so David turned away and walked back down the steps to his car.

  Only when he had gone did I realise that I had not said a word – I just hadn’t had anything to say!

  I went up to my room, took off my Pacquin dress, hanging it up carefully and only when I was in my nightgown did I look at my face in the mirror to see if I had altered in any way.

  I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had looked quite different because I knew quite unmistakably that I was completely and irrevocably in love.

  Reflection 11

  I don’t remember very much about the next day.

  I do remember that before I left the boarding house that morning I telephoned Lord Rowden’s house.

  He had said that if I rang early he would answer the telephone himself, but I knew I couldn’t speak to him at the studio because of Melanie, so I decided to pretend to be a servant speaking for me.

  However, there was no need to do that because when I looked in the telephone book I saw that he had three telephone lines and one had ‘secretary’ against it.

  So I rang that number and when a woman answered, I said,

  “Will you please give Lord Rowden a message?”

  “Who is speaking?” she enquired.

  “I am speaking for Miss Samantha Clyde,” I replied. “Will you please tell Lord Rowden that Miss Clyde is very sorry, but she is unable to dine with him tonight?”

  With that I put the receiver down quickly and hurried off to the studio.

  “Did you enjoy yourself last night?” Giles asked as soon as he came in about an hour after we had all been waiting for him.

  “Yes, thank you,” I answered.

  “I hope you persuaded David Durham to have his picture taken.”

  I felt rather guilty because I hadn’t thought about Giles or his photographs all the evening.

  I didn’t answer for a moment and Giles, realising that it had escaped my memory, said sharply,

  “You might remember, Samantha, that it is part of your job to bring in customers and I particularly want to photograph David Durham.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I said meekly.

  “Then you’re seeing him again?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  Giles gave me a sharp glance, but he didn’t ask any more questions and merely said,

  “Good!” and started arranging the lights.

  I never knew a day to pass so slowly.

  It seemed to me as if every hour crawled past and I must have looked at the clock a hundred times to find it had only moved by a few minutes.

  Giles kept me later that afternoon than Melanie and Hortense.

  He had a number of photographs to do for a French magazine, but unfortunately he did the day dresses first and the evening gowns last, and nearly all my pictures were in evening dress.

  At last when it was after six o’clock he finished and I was just hurrying into my own clothes when the telephone on Miss Macey’s desk rang.

  Only a curtain separated the place where we changed and the outer office, so I heard her say,

  “Oh, yes, Lord Rowden. I’ll try to find out.”

  She put her hand over the mouthpiece and, as I looked round the curtain, she said,

  “Lord Rowden wants to know if I will give him your address.”

  My first thought was that it was a blessing that Melanie had already gone home and then I knew that I had no wish to see Lord Rowden again or have anything to do with him.

  “Tell him you don’t know,” I whispered.

  “He won’t believe that,” Miss Macey replied.

  “Then make some excuse. I don’t want him ringing me at the boarding house.”

  Miss Macey gave me a look to see if I was telling her the truth and then she spoke into the receiver,

  “I’m so sorry but I believe Miss Clyde has recently changed her address and we don’t seem to have it. But she’ll be here tomorrow.”

  She put the receiver down and I said,

  “Thank you. But if he rings again, what are you going to say?”

  “I’ll try to keep him away from you,” Miss Macey said in a kinder tone than she usually used. “He’s always running after pretty girls.”

  “But he’s quite old,” I exclaimed.

  “Age doesn’t stop them,” Miss Macey remarked.

  “Hasn’t he a wife?” I enquired.

  “Oh, ye
s, and quite a number of children,” Miss Macey replied. “Lady Rowden lives in Paris most of the time and I expect the children are at school or at his house in the country.”

  “Now I think of it,” I said, “I seem to have seen some pictures somewhere of Rowden Park.”

  “It’s one of the most famous houses in England,” Miss Macey said, “but if you are wise, Samantha, you will leave his Lordship to Melanie. She should be able to cope with him.”

  “I think he’s horrid and I don’t want to see him again,” I murmured.

  For the first time I had known her, Miss Macey smiled and said to me pleasantly,

  “Sometimes you make a lot of sense, Samantha.”

  I didn’t think about Lord Rowden again. I was in such a hurry to get back and change.

  I had to wait ages for a bus. Even so, having hurried to have a bath, I was ready for a good quarter of an hour before David arrived.

  After the fantastic outfit I had worn the night before, I was determined to look quite different. So I put on a black dress that Giles had chosen for me, which I knew made my hair look fiery and my skin very white.

  Made of black chiffon it was very soft and becoming, and designed by Molyneux. I liked it almost the best of my gowns because it was so simple.

  I had a black velvet wrap to go with it and I wore no jewellery because I didn’t have any.

  When I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought perhaps I had made a mistake and should have worn something more elaborate. I would have changed everything at the last moment if I hadn’t been afraid of keeping David waiting.

  I went down to the hall and the moment I saw his Bentley draw up outside I ran down the steps.

  He didn’t seem surprised that I had been waiting for him, he just opened the door and said in his deep voice,

  “Good evening, Samantha!”

  It sounded quite different from the way anyone else said it.

  I stepped in. He picked up my hand and kissed it and I felt a little ripple of excitement go through me.

  “You’re absurdly lovely!” he said and now there was a funny mocking tone in his voice, as if he laughed at himself and me.

  He started up the car and we drove off.

  I hadn’t asked where we were going. It was just so wonderful to be beside him and I knew that was what I had been longing for all day. So much so that I could hardly believe now that he was really there.

  One thing I had done during the luncheon break was to buy a copy of his book.

  There was a huge pile of them in Hatchards and while I was buying my copy, three others were sold to people picking them up off the counter. I was glad for David’s sake that they were selling so well.

  We had been so busy all day that I had not had a chance to read any of the book, but I looked at his photograph on the back and realised it didn’t do him justice.

  It was in fact only a snapshot taken against what appeared to be a battlefield.

  I read the publisher’s comments, which said,

  “This is undoubtedly the most provocative and disturbing novel that has been written in the post-war years. David Durham expresses all the frustrations and the anger of the younger generation against the muddled thinking, the inept attitude of politicians and the grave social injustices that are being callously perpetrated on every side. Never has there been a stronger or more violent clarion call from the youth of this generation for a rebellion against the laissez-faire existing in England today.”

  “You’re not going to read that book, are you?” Melanie asked as I turned the pages while I was waiting for Giles to photograph me.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “You won’t understand it,” Melanie answered. “Everyone has a different opinion about it. I agree with Lord Rowden who said when I was with him at Ascot that he was fed up with people who complained. There is a lot of enjoyment to be found in life if one looks in the right places.”

  I wondered what Lord Rowden considered the ‘right places’. I only knew that if David was complaining he would be quite sure of his facts.

  I didn’t understand a great deal of what he had said to me last night. But he had a positive way of speaking which made everything he said seem utterly and completely convincing.

  He had not been talking about his book, Vultures Pick Their Bones, but about another book he was starting to write.

  As far as I could make out, there were things going on beneath the surface in every country that every right-minded person would want exposed.

  “Won’t they hate you for bringing into the open all the things they want to keep hidden?” I asked him.

  “Under the circumstances I like being hated,” he had replied.

  We were driving now, I realised, not towards the West End, where I had expected him to take me, but out of London.

  As if he knew that I was surprised and, without my saying anything he explained,

  “I’m taking you to a quiet little place which I think you will enjoy. It’s very difficult to find good food in London these days. This is run by a Frenchman who after being a waiter started out on his own, and everybody who eats there once goes again, so he is making a success of it.”

  I was quite content to go anywhere with David – to the moon if he asked me. I looked at him from under my eyelashes as he drove the car and thought how wildly attractive he was and yet quite unlike any man I had ever seen before.

  “Have you been looking forward to seeing me again?” he asked suddenly, as we drove through the suburbs.

  “Today seemed very long,” I answered truthfully.

  He gave a little laugh.

  “I have been wondering what your hair is like, Samantha and now I know.”

  “Do you like it?” I asked.

  “Do you really want me to tell you how much?” he enquired.

  “Yes, please,” I replied and he laughed again.

  “You are very clever,” he said after a moment, “in managing simultaneously to look one thing and seem another.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “I’m referring to the Samantha poise of looking as if all the erotic secrets of the world lay behind your eyes and being able to speak at the same time with the enthusiasm of a very young girl.”

  I didn’t know what to reply to this because I know only too well now what he meant.

  How could he possibly know that Samantha from Little Poolbrook had not the slightest idea what was implied by the word ‘erotic’ and that she sounded eager and enthusiastic because everything was so new and unexpected to her?

  I took refuge in silence and then, a little while later, we drew up at a small pub.

  It looked very old, almost like one of the highway inns that still exist in some of the villages near us at home.

  David parked the car at the side and we went in through a small door into a tiny oak-beamed room with a bar that seemed to fill it almost completely.

  There were one or two local people drinking beer and we passed through the bar into a room on the other side of it which had a bow window looking out onto the small garden.

  The Proprietor appeared and was delighted to see David.

  He had reserved us a table in the bow window. The room was half-panelled with very old oak and there were rafters overhead, which David told me later, were made from ships’ timbers.

  “It is very nice to see you, Monsieur Durham,” said the Proprietor, whose name was Henri. “I’m very grateful to you for the people you have sent me.”

  “Are you doing well?” David asked.

  “Very well and better than I expected, thanks to you.”

  “In which case I shall expect a superlative dinner this evening,” David said. “I have brought you the most beautiful lady in London to enjoy it.”

  “Enchanté, mademoiselle,” Henri said.

  Then he and David went into a long consultation over the menu.

  I didn’t mind what we ate. I was just happy to be with David and I fel
t that he had brought me to this small place because he wanted to be alone with me and not just to show me off as so many other men wanted to do when they took me out.

  At last the meal was ordered and David said,

  “What would you like to drink, Samantha? I have a feeling you don’t enjoy champagne as much as you might be expected to do.”

  “I don’t really like it at all,” I answered.

  “You are full of surprises,” David said. “We’ll have a very light white wine, which I’m sure you’ll prefer.”

  He ordered it and when Henri said, “an aperitif, monsieur?” David looked at me again.

  “Must I have anything?” I asked. “I really dislike cocktails.”

  I thought David stared at me rather searchingly as if he hardly believed what I said. But he ordered a martini for himself and a tomato juice for me.

  When Henri had gone, he sat back and said,

  “Are you happy, Samantha?”

  “Very very happy,” I answered. “I wanted so much to see you this evening.”

  Only when I had said it did I think that I had been too gushing and maybe too truthful. Perhaps David would think that I was rushing after him if I appeared too eager.

  I turned my head away, but I knew that he was gazing at me and after a moment he said,

  “There’s something I want to ask you, Samantha. How many men have kissed you?”

  It was not a question I had expected and I felt the colour rise in my cheeks.

  For the first time I thought how fast it had been for me to allow him to kiss me when we really knew nothing about each other and he had not even said that he was attracted to me.

  I had told myself that I would never let a man kiss me until I knew that he was really in love with me.

  I felt that was what Daddy meant when he said that I must ‘keep myself for the man who would really matter in my life’.

  As far as I was concerned, David was the only person who had mattered, but, of course, I realised it had happened too quickly and I might not matter at all to him.

  So I felt ashamed and my cheeks became redder and redder because I really didn’t know what to say.

  “You are blushing, Samantha,” David said after a moment in a surprised voice.

  Then, as I continued to look away from him across the room, he put out his hand and, taking my chin in his fingers, he turned my face round to his.