Nothing I had ever known in my whole life had prepared me for David Durham.
I suppose, like all lonely children, I had invented a fantasy world of my own which had gradually evolved into the love-imaginings of an adolescent.
I had expected men to be strong and masculine, authoritative but tender, and rather respectful where women were concerned.
Of course, I must have based my conception of a man in love on the way my father treated my mother and his obvious adoration of her.
I had never imagined that anyone could be as vitally and irresistibly attractive as David Durham.
He took me to a small quiet restaurant where there were very few other people. The head waiter was pleased to see him and we were shown to a secluded sofa table in an alcove.
He ordered food for both of us and I was given champagne, although I didn’t ask for it.
Then David put his elbows on the table and talked.
I cannot remember now what we talked about. I only knew it was fascinatingly exciting and I must have sat like a mesmerised rabbit with my eyes on his face, trying to understand what he was saying to me.
But, of course, I didn’t look stupid, ignorant and bemused, as I in fact felt inside. I looked enigmatic, exotic and doubtless very sophisticated in the silver lamé with the long emerald earrings swinging against my white skin.
When dinner was finished, a man started to play the piano very softly at the other end of the room.
David rose to his feet and said,
“I want to dance with you, Samantha.”
When he put his arms round me, I felt a strange feeling in my throat. I couldn’t explain it, but at the same time it was wildly exciting.
He held me very close and, although there were only two or three other couples on the floor, he moved very slowly in the manner of people who dance when there is hardly room to move.
“I like your scent,” he remarked after a moment.
It was difficult for me to remember what it was.
At the shops where we gave dress shows they often had their own make of scent and sometimes, if they were feeling generous, they gave us a small bottle, hoping we would recommend it.
I thought I might be wearing one of Molyneux’s, but I wasn’t really certain. When I was dressing I used the first bottle that came to hand.
“I am glad,” I said after a moment.
“Are you?” David asked. “Are you really glad, Samantha, that I should like your scent and everything else about you?”
“You don’t know me well enough to say that,” I answered.
Equally I felt very thrilled at his words. I wanted him to like me.
He was quite the most exciting person I had met since I came to London. At the same time he frightened me.
He knew so much. He seemed so sophisticated that I felt it was only a question of time, perhaps an hour or so, before he would realise how little there was about me to get to know and how inadequate I was in every way to be his companion even for dinner.
As we left the Meldriths, I had told Giles that we were leaving.
When he saw who I was with, there had been a look of amusement on his face.
I thought perhaps it was because he thought that there was something incongruous about me, the girl he had discovered in Little Poolbrook wearing the wrong sort of clothes, going out with someone as famous as David Durham.
“You are a very mysterious person,” David was saying in my ear as we moved slowly round the polished floor. “What are you thinking about behind that Sphinx-like expression in your eyes?”
I had heard this type of remark before from other men, but somehow it had quite a different significance when David said it.
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.