101 Pieces of Me (11 page)

Christmas was two weeks away. January was thirty-one days long. I had only about six weeks before my reason to be with David would disappear. Unless, of course, there was a different, more permanent reason for us to be together. “What will you do next?” I asked conversationally. “Another film for David Penn Productions?”

He considered for a moment, his eyes on my face. “Actually, Clara my dear, I am thinking of following in Marjorie’s footsteps and trying my hand in California. Of course, I have a better chance of success than she ever did. She is quite deluded, you know.”

I was dismayed. “America! But you are a success
here
!”

“Exactly.” He leaned forward eagerly. “So I can be a greater success
there
. California is where the future of film-making is. They have a lot of space, fine weather and people who are prepared to put money into the industry and make it into something really big. I have some contacts there who are keen to introduce me to the men who matter. I really feel I should take the opportunity.”

Seeing my disappointment, he took my hand. “We’ll have to see how this film does,” he said gently, “but I’m willing to wager that there will be plenty of other opportunities for Clara Hope, here and in California. If she wishes to seize them, of course.”

Did he mean he might take me with him? I could not ask. “Clara Hope is ready for anything!” I blurted.

He laughed. “In that case, I am very glad to be in her company.” He took the bottle of wine out of the cooler and filled my glass. “Drink up, my dear.”

A
fter dinner, the waiter set down a tray of coffee on a low table by the fireplace and left the room, closing the door noiselessly behind him. David sat on a small sofa and patted the cushion next to him. “Let us enjoy ourselves for a moment, shall we?”

I did not need such an invitation. As he spoke, I was already plumping myself down like a schoolgirl. My head felt light; my spirits were high. “Enjoy ourselves?” I repeated coquettishly. I felt as if I were acting in one of the scenes where I had to tempt Charles de Montfort with Eloise’s feminine charm. I saw other girls flirt all the time, but I was not sure if David would consider it unbecoming.

It seemed not. He grinned charmingly. His hand went to his jacket pocket and he drew out an embossed box, unmistakably a jeweller’s box. “But first, my dear,” he said, “I implore you to accept this as a token of my regard.”

My ears buzzed with wild thoughts:
It will not be a ring. It cannot not be a ring. If it is a ring, what will I say?
Breathless, I opened the box.

It was not a ring. It was a slim gold bracelet studded with green stones. When I looked at David his grin had become a half-doubtful smile, and in his eyes was the message, “please like my gift; I can’t bear it if you reject me!”

“Oh, David, it’s beautiful! I absolutely adore it. Thank you so much!” I took it from the box and held it up. In the artificial light, it glowed like fire. “Are these emeralds?”

His face clouded, though at the time I did not realize it was because of my lack of taste. “Of course,” he said gently. “Nothing but the most beautiful jewels for the most beautiful lady. Consider it your Christmas present, a little early.” He took it from my hand. “Here, let me put it on for you.”

When he had done so, I held my wrist up, watching the green stones twinkle in the light. “I’ve never had such a glorious thing before, you know… I am so lucky, I can’t—”

But I did not say the remainder of my sentence, because David’s hands were suddenly drawing my face towards his and his lips descended on mine. It was a longer, more insistent kiss than the ones he had given me outside the Ritz. I did not know how to respond. No one had ever kissed me like this before. Boys in Haverth plonked their mouths in roughly the right place and fumbled drunkenly with blouse buttons and petticoats, but girls just pushed them away and laughed. No one had ever spoken to me with interested courtesy, complimented me and spent money on me. No one had ever been as worldly, rich and good-looking as David either. And no one had ever placed his lips – soft, searching, electrifying – so tenderly on mine.

I felt my body stiffen, but as he put his hands on the tops of my legs, and began to caress them gently, my muscles softened and we leaned against each other, chest to chest, lips to lips, absorbed in a world of sensation. The feeling was like electricity passing through me. My heart responded to the current that crackled around it, increasing its rate and changing its rhythm. I had never listened to my heart before, or felt its movements so keenly. But David’s kiss made all the fibres and vessels and cells in my body suddenly more sensitive. Every bit of me leapt towards him, eager for more of the electric spark.

We went on kissing. I put my hands inside his jacket and held him tightly around his waist. He was a slim man, tall, though not very muscular. Under his shirt his flesh felt soft, yet not soft like my own flesh. I had never considered before what it was that made men so different from women, apart from the obvious things. But his flat, tubular body seemed the very height of masculinity. Touching him, I was aware that his hands – again, hands with fingers and thumbs like mine, yet
not
like mine – were touching me and giving him the same sensations as I was feeling. It was mutual attraction, and mutual desire. David and I were in love.

S
ometimes we had snow in the village at Christmas, but that year was mild. Dampness hung in the air, showing misty over the mountains and clinging to hair and hats and overcoats. Haverth did not look picturesque. It looked, after my six-month absence, primitive. And
small
. How quickly I had become accustomed to my spacious hotel room! The privy at the bottom of the garden seemed insanitary, even though Mam scrubbed it every day. The garden itself, with its rows of cabbages and potatoes, lacked any beauty. And indoors the rooms seemed impossibly cramped, as if we were all trying to fit ourselves into a dolls’ house.

Da kept saying, “I can’t believe it’s our Sarah!”, and staring at me with moist eyes. When I arrived on Christmas Eve in the taxi from Aberaeron, Mam hugged me so tightly I had to fight her off so that I could breathe. And even Frank, whose new moustache made him look unrecognizably grown up, and far too conscious of himself to show his feelings, squeezed my shoulder. I wanted to embrace him, but had to content myself with admiring the facial hair and seeing his joy when I gave him the Christmas gift I’d brought.

“It’s cells,” I told him as he drew the wooden frame out of its box.

“I know what it is!”

“Well, Mam and Da might not.”

Mam laughed. “Do you know what cells are, John?”

“It’s that thing!” replied Da.

Frank was speechless. He put the framed film cells on the table and contemplated them in awe. Da inspected them too. “I still don’t know what I’m looking at, love,” he said to me.

“It’s the film Sarah’s in, see, Da.” Frank had found his voice, which shook a little. “It’s some of the bits that are all joined together to make the film, isn’t it, Sair?”

I nodded. “I got sixteen because that’s how many make one foot of film.”

Mam was looking baffled. “One foot?”

“Unbelievable, isn’t it?” I went on, feeling important. “A film is one long strip of these cells, or frames, they sometimes call them, and when the strip is passed over the light, the pictures appear to move.” I could not resist adding the particle of knowledge I had cherished ever since David had imparted it to me. “Do you know, for every second of film, twenty-four of these little bits go in front of the light? One hundred make just over four seconds of film.”

Frank had gone pink with pleasure. “People like me
never
get hold of them!”

“People like film stars’ brothers, you mean?” teased Mam. She poked Frank’s shoulder. “What do you say to your sister now, Frank?”

“Oh, thank you, Sair!” He was too shy to kiss this new Sarah, who wore a layer of paint on her face and expensive scent behind her ears. But he picked up my gift and held it to his chest as tenderly as any lover. “I’ll treasure it.” Suddenly, something occurred to him. “How did you get them? I bet you stole them!”

“She did
not
steal them!” Mam was indignant, though Da was laughing. “Frank Freebody, you take that back!”

I was glad of Mam’s intervention. It gave me time to compose myself for the moment I had been anticipating ever since I arrived. “I didn’t steal them. I was given them by David Penn, the director of the film. If you hold them up to the light, Frank, you’ll see that I’m in them. Less than one second of me, but me nevertheless.”

There. I’d said his name. And I didn’t
think
I’d gone red or fidgeted while I said it.

But Mam was regarding me curiously. “You and this David Penn, then, are you … you know, stepping out?”

Stepping out
. I tried not to cringe. That was a less approving version of “walking out”, which was the Haverth term for courting with a possible view to marriage.

“No, of course not,” I told her. And now I
did
go red. The blush crept up my neck and burned my cheeks. “He’s the director of the film, that’s all, and I told him my brother liked films, and he said some cells from the film would be a nice Christmas present.”

They were all looking at me. “And he was right, wasn’t he?” I added brightly.

F
lorence and Mary wanted to hear every last detail about the film, the costumes, the hotel I was living in, the restaurants and nightclubs, the cars I had ridden in. They wanted to hear everything I could tell them about London. Florence, who had flung my fox fur around her neck the moment I took it off, demanded an exact description of the West End shop that had sold it to me. Mary asked me if the trains really went under the ground, or was that only in the pictures? They were so excited that they kept interrupting each other, their words tumbling out in a torrent. But both of them sat silent, their attention riveted, when I told them about David.

“So you’re walking out with the
director
?” asked Mary incredulously. “I bet they’re all jealous, aren’t they?”