She got Sister Magdalene, the nun who taught literature and history, to advise me what to read and she would bring me all the books that she thought would help me.
Surprisingly the nuns had quite a large library and, although naturally there were no modern novels and they would not have thought of including David’s book, there were plenty of the classics.
There was Thackeray, Jane Austen and Trollope, to mention but a few, and Sister Magdalene gave me books on mythology, which I enjoyed more than anything else.
The doctor insisted that I must rest, so I lay in bed and read. When he let me get up, I would sit in the garden, which was very peaceful and go on reading.
When I didn’t understand anything, I discussed it with Sister Magdalene and every day I talked to Sister Thérèse in French until she seemed really pleased with me.
Gradually I became stronger, although I still found it difficult to eat and the food at the Convent was not very tempting.
One day Aunt Lucy came out into the garden and said to me,
“Don’t you think, Samantha, that it’s time you returned to work?”
I looked at her in surprise. I had become so used to thinking of myself as an invalid that I really hadn’t realised that sooner or later I would have to either go back to London and Giles or find other employment.
Aunt Lucy had already told me that Daddy had left me everything he possessed, which wasn’t very much – just a few hundred pounds. Enough to keep me from starving, but I would certainly have to earn my own living for the rest of my life.
Somehow it was a shock to think that Aunt Lucy wanted to get rid of me.
“Do you want me to go away?” I asked.
“No, Samantha, I like having you here,” Aunt Lucy replied, “but you cannot spend the rest of your life doing nothing but read. You are young and this is not the right sort of existence for a young girl.”
“Some of the nuns are as young as I am,” I argued.
“Do you want to become a nun?” Aunt Lucy enquired.
I thought of David and knew that that was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to see him again, I wanted him to love me as he had done before he realised how very inadequate I was.
Unfortunately, learning had only made me realise how much more I had to learn.
I suppose I had always known that I was ignorant, but only when I began to study properly was I appalled to find how little I knew. There were great blank spaces in my mind that ought to have been filled with history and geography and knowledge of world events.
“There is so much I want to do here, Aunt Lucy,” I said.
She didn’t answer and I found out later that she had telephoned Giles and told him where I was.
He had, it appeared, been very worried by my disappearance, although he had thought at first that I must have gone home. Anyway he said he would like me back and he said the same to me when Aunt Lucy made me telephone him.
“Vogue and a number of other papers are asking particularly for pictures of you, Samantha,” he said. “You’ve made it very difficult for me running off in that irresponsible manner.”
“I’m sorry,” I said meekly.
“Your aunt tells me that you have been very unhappy over your father’s death,” Giles went on, “and, of course, in the circumstances, I must forgive you. But come back at once, Samantha. There is a lot of work to be done.”
I went back to London feeling nervous and rather frightened, not only of Giles but also in case I met David.
“I’ll come back only on one condition,” I said to Giles on the telephone, “and that is you don’t ask David Durham to the studio while I am there and that you don’t give him my new address.”
“Don’t you wish to see him?” Giles asked in surprise.
“No!” I replied briefly.
There was a silence as if he was thinking over what I had said and then he answered,
“Your private life is nothing to do with me, Samantha. If you don’t want to see David Durham, I shall certainly not tell him where you are living.”
When Giles saw me he was delighted that I had grown so thin.
Personally, I think I am all eyes with no face and Melanie teases me for looking like a lamppost. But Edward Molyneux and Norman Hartnell were thrilled and promised to design several dresses especially for me in their new collections.
One of the first things I did on getting back to London was to join a library and, after a week or so, they became used to my changing my books every other day and would joke about it when I appeared.
I was doing my best about my education, but I had not forgotten that David also said I was ‘absurdly innocent’!
I could still hear him saying the words in that scathing sarcastic voice that always seemed to flick me on the raw and make me feel miserable.
I thought of him with Lady Bettine and I knew that all the women who had hung around him in the past and whom perhaps he had loved, had been sophisticated and very very experienced.
It was not surprising, I told myself miserably, that he found me boring. How could I be anything else when I was as ignorant about love as I was about everything else?
The difficulty was that while I could read history and literature and other subjects, there didn’t seem to be a book to teach me about love.
I had, of course, while I was reading, learnt of the great love affairs down the centuries and, when I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that if I really loved David I had been wrong not to do what he wanted.
After all, Kings had given up their thrones, countries had gone to war, families had engaged in endless vendettas, men had been tortured or died for love!
Women had sacrificed their reputations, their children, their status in Society and even their lives, because they loved a man to the exclusion of all else.
Perhaps David was right and love was too important for us to refuse it.
I thought and thought about David and how he had wanted me to go away with him. It seemed to me that the more I read, the more I found that people were prepared to make a sacrifice of everything they held dear, if it was for someone they loved.
It took me a long time to think it out and then I told myself that if I loved David enough I must do as he wanted, however much it might be against my principles.
I kept feeling that to win him back I personally had to make a sacrifice and that nothing was too difficult or too frightening to do if it would make David love me again.
I lay awake night after night planning how the day would come when I would go to David and say,
“I’m no longer ‘abysmally ignorant’ nor am I ‘absurdly innocent’. I now know quite a lot and I am experienced in love.”
And then in my imagination he would hold out his arms and tell me that he loved me and we would be happy again.
Even to think of David holding me close and kissing me made me feel a little of that ecstasy and wonder he had given me when I first knew him.
It seemed a very long time ago, but there was one thing that was comforting and that was to know that, if he would not marry me, David was unlikely to marry anyone else.
‘Perhaps when he sees how different I have become and realises how hard I have worked because I love him, he will ask me to be his wife,’ I told myself.
Even as I did so I felt it was only a dream, an impossible fantastic dream that would never come true! But I had to try!
I had to struggle and fight to change myself simply because, as I said to myself, ‘Without David I will never be happy again and there will be no reason to go on living’.
I heard my voice die away in the darkness. I seemed to have been talking for a very long time.
I had concentrated so hard in recalling what had happened that, as I talked, I had almost forgotten that David was really there and was listening.
It had been like talking to the imaginary David as I had done every night since I had run away from him.
I started when suddenly he said in hi
s deep voice,
“What happened then, Samantha?”
“I met – Peter and – Victor – ” I answered.
‘Tell me about them,” David demanded.
Reflection 20
Melanie, Hortense and I had been taken by Giles to Syon House, which belonged to the Duke of Northumberland, to be photographed.
Vogue had the idea of having models posed against realistic backgrounds in famous houses.
Syon House was fantastic! I had never realised that a house could be so beautiful and so elegant.
I wish I could have seen it in the old days when it had dozens of flunkeys in their silver-buttoned livery and the Duke had given grand parties attended by Royalty.
The house had been shut up for most of the War and it had a slightly unlived in look that houses take on when the family who own it are not in residence. But it was still breathtaking to look at and I really enjoyed posing in the pillared hall with its gilded statues, in the Long Gallery and the beautiful salons.
Giles had finished with me for the moment and was concentrating on Melanie and Hortense, so I wandered away to look at the pictures.
I was standing in front of a very beautiful Dutch painting when I heard someone approach.
I thought it was Giles and I said,
“I wonder who painted this?”
“Jan Van Eyck,” a man’s voice answered and I looked round in surprise.
It was not Giles as I had expected, but a fair-haired man of about thirty, bare-headed and carrying a large notebook.
He was obviously a gentleman and I thought he might be one of the Northumberland family.
“Are you interested in pictures?” he asked.
“I wish I knew more about them,” I answered, thinking once again how ignorant I was and here was another subject I knew nothing about.
“Would you like me to tell you what I know?” he asked.
“Would you do that?”
He smiled.
“I know who you are, so perhaps I should introduce myself. My name is Peter Sinclair.”
“Are you a relation of the Duke?” I asked ingenuously.
He laughed.
“Nothing so grand. I work at Christie’s. I am here to re-value some of the pictures and furniture. The Duke thinks that they are under-insured.”
I knew that Christie’s were the famous auctioneers in St. James’s who held auctions of pictures and antique furniture.
“You must have a very interesting job,” I said.
“Perhaps it is almost as interesting as yours,” he answered. “Let me tell you about the pictures and you will then be able to tell me if they are as absorbing as the lovely gowns you wear.”
We walked around the gallery and he told me the most fascinating stories, not only about the pictures but also the artists who painted them and how they had come into the possession of the Northumberland family.
There was something about Peter I liked from the moment I met him.
He was very quiet and unassuming and he told me afterwards that it was the bravest thing he had ever done in speaking to me and offering to be my guide.
“I’m really a very shy person, Samantha,” he said, “but I had the feeling that you were anxious to learn and that made me brave.”
I suppose it was again brave of him, when Giles said it was time to leave, to ask me if I would like to go with him the next day, which happened to be Saturday, to a house in the country where he had to inspect some furniture which was being sent to Christie’s to be auctioned.
It was the first of many houses Peter took me to and because he loved antiques he made me love them too.
I learnt all sorts of interesting things from him that I am sure no one else would have told me and which never appear in the guide books.
For instance how Van Dyke painted hands better than anybody else, how Grinling Gibbons always put an ear of corn among his carvings as a kind of trade mark and how Botticelli’s model for the Birth of Venus had died at the age of twenty-three of consumption and had been so beautiful that great crowds had stood silent in the street to watch her coffin pass.
Peter made the things he talked about come to life and I became more and more fascinated with everything he told me.
‘This,’ I told myself, ‘is the proper way to learn and I am sure that everything that seems new to me, David has known all his life.
Then gradually I thought perhaps that he could teach me more than just about pictures and furniture.
When I first made up my mind that to please David I must be experienced in love, I realised, of course, that it meant becoming involved with a man.
The mere idea of letting someone like Lord Rowden touch me made me feel sick.
I had managed to avoid seeing him since I had come back to London. I hoped that after I had behaved so badly at his house party and made him look a fool by running away, he would not wish to speak to me again, but Melanie told me that he had enquired after me several times before my return.
I knew I could not bear Lord Rowden even to come near me, let alone kiss me, but there had to be a man somewhere that I could tolerate, otherwise I would go on being ‘absurdly innocent’ and ‘a crashing bore’ for ever.
Of course, all the usual young men had turned up again to ask me out to dinner and to dance. But when I could avoid Giles knowing about it, I refused every invitation and went home alone at night to carry on with my reading.
I had made up my mind that I couldn’t face the boarding house again. It was not only because it was so uncomfortable but because I felt that Mrs. Simpson might ask questions.
So I went to a cheap hotel for the first week and then a house agent found me my flat. It was small but I could just afford the rent and I could put in it some of the furniture from the Vicarage, which I had left in store.
It was quite an effort to get it ready, but Peter found me a very cheap painter to work after hours and who charged far less than a firm would have done.
I altered the curtains myself to fit the windows and Peter hung the pictures for me.
They weren’t great Masters like those we had looked at in other people’s houses, but I had known them all my life and I loved having them with me as a reminder of Mummy and Daddy. I knew that in a way they prevented me from being lonely.
Even when Peter gave me dinner he never suggested coming into the flat at night. I knew that he was thinking of my reputation and was afraid of my being talked about by the other tenants in the house.
He was also kind and understanding and ready to listen to what I had to say. He never laughed at me for not knowing the right answer and he was never cross or irritable if I forgot something he had already told me.
It took me a little time, but finally I made up my mind that when Peter wanted to kiss me, as he was sure to do sooner or later – the young Guardsmen were still trying to do so every time they took me out – I would say ‘yes’.
Then, I supposed, like David, he would want to make love to me and I would say ‘yes’ to that too.
I tried not to feel that I would shrink away and feel horrified when the moment came.
After all, I liked Peter, I liked him very much indeed. He was the kindest and nicest friend I ever had and he was so gentle that I really didn’t think that he would frighten anyone, not even me.
The extraordinary thing was that Peter didn’t try to kiss me and, although he asked me out almost every evening and took me to the country every Saturday, he was just friendly, kind and sympathetic as he had always been.
If it hadn’t been for all the other young men who were endlessly asking me to go out dancing with them and who made veiled innuendos about other things we might do, I would have begun to feel that I had lost all my attractions.
‘I must give Peter more encouragement,’ I told myself. ‘If we go on at this rate, I shall be one hundred and thirty before I am experienced enough for David, by which time he will have forgotten all about me!’
I couldn�
��t think of David and Lady Bettine without feeling that terrible agonising pain inside me which had taken the place of the numb misery that I had felt when I had known that they were going to be together on The Queen Mary.
I tried not to think about them but it was very difficult, for I kept seeing them clinging together as they danced at Bray Park, Lady Bettine’s slanting eyes looking up into David’s and her red lips inviting his.
‘Oh, David – David – ’ I would cry inside me and I would force myself to think of something else.
It was only sometimes at night that I really cried because it seemed so hopeless. Then I would tell myself that I hadn’t given my plan a proper chance and there was Peter only waiting for me to suggest that we made love together.
I wasn’t quite certain what that entailed but I thought that perhaps with Peter it would not be too horrifying.
Then one evening when we came back from the country having had a delicious dinner just outside London, Peter drove me back to the flat and said,
“Can I come in for a moment, Samantha?”
For the moment I was too surprised to answer him. He had never suggested it before. Then I knew that this was what I had been waiting for.
“Yes – of course, Peter,” I answered after a moment’s pause.
I stepped out of the car and waited while he locked it and then he followed me up the steps.
I felt so nervous I could hardly open my flat door.
The room looked very nice and cosy and Peter had given me some roses, which scented the air.
Peter shut the door behind him and I stood still, thinking that he would take me in his arms and kiss me for the first time.
My lips felt dry and I had an idiotic desire to run away and lock myself in my bedroom.
“I want to talk to you, Samantha,” Peter said quietly.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “Shall we sit down?”
I sat down on the sofa which was really too big for the room and Peter sat beside me.
I thought he would take my hand, but after a moment he said,
“I want to tell you, Samantha, that I’m going away.”
“Going away?” I ejaculated in astonishment.
“I am going to Italy,” he said. “Christie’s have some work to do there and, when they suggested that I should do it, I accepted.”
Say Yes Samantha Page 13