You Find Him, I'll Fix Him

I

On a hot July afternoon I was dozing in my office, being offensive to no one and with nothing important to do, when the telephone bell brought me awake with a start.

I picked up the receiver.

“Yes, Gina?”

“It’s Mr. Sherwin Chalmers on the line,” Gina said breathlessly.

I became breathless too.

“Chalmers? For Pete’s sake! He’s not here in Rome?”

“He’s calling from New York.”

I got back some of my breath, but not all of it.

“Okay, put him through,” I said, and sat forward, no calmer than a spinster who has found a man under her bed.

For four years I had been in charge of the Rome office of the New York Western Telegram, and this was my first contact with Chalmers who owned the paper.

He was a multi-millionaire, a dictator in his own particular field and a brilliant newspaper man. To have Sherwin Chalmers call you on the telephone was like having the President ask you to tea at the White House.

I put the receiver to my ear and waited. There were the usual clicks and pops, then a cool female voice said, “Is that Mr. Dawson?”

I said it was.

“Will you hold on for Mr. Chalmers, please?”

I said I would, and wondered how she would have reacted if I had told her I wouldn’t.

There were more clicks and pops, then a voice that sounded like a hammer beating on an anvil barked, “Dawson?”

“Yes, Mr. Chalmers.”

There was a pause and I wondered what the kick was going to be. It had to be a kick. I couldn’t imagine that the great man would be calling unless something had displeased him.

What came next surprised me.

“Look, Dawson,” he said, “my daughter will be arriving in Rome to-morrow on the elevenfifty plane. I want you to meet her and take her to the Excelsior Hotel. My secretary has fixed a reservation for her. Will you do that?”

This was the first time I had heard he had a daughter. I knew he had been married four times, but a daughter was news to me, “She’ll be studying at the university,” he went on, words tumbling out of his mouth as if he were bored with the subject and wanted to get done with it as quickly as possible. “If she wants anything, I’ve told her to call on you. I don’t want you to give her any money. That is important- She’s getting sixty dollars a week from me, and that is quite enough for a young girt. She has a job of work to do, and if she does it the way I want her to do it, she won’t need much money. But I’d like to know someone is at hand in case she needs anything or gets ill or something.”

“She hasn’t anyone here then?” I asked, not liking the sound of this. As a nurse-maid, I don’t rate myself very high.

“I’ve given her some introductions, and she’ll be at the university, so she’ll get to know people,” Chalmers said. I could hear the impatience in his voice.

“Okay, Mr. Chalmers. I’ll meet her, and if she wants anything, I’ll fix it.”

“That’s what I want.” There was a pause, then he said, “Things all right at your end?” He didn’t sound particularly interested.

I said they were a little slow.

There was another long pause, and I could hear him breathing heavily. I had a vision of a short, fat man with a chin like Mussolini’s, eyes like the points of an ice-pick and a mouth like a bear-trap.

“Hammerstock was talking to me about you last week,” he said abruptly. “He seems to think he should get you back here.”

I drew in a long, slow breath. I had been aching to hear this news for the past ten months.

“Well, I’d certainly like that if it could be arranged.”

“I’ll think about it.”

The click in my ear told me he had hung up. I replaced the receiver, pushed back my chair to give me a little breathing, space and stared at the opposite wall while I thought how nice it would be to get home after four years in Italy. Not that I disliked Rome, but I knew, so long as I was holding down this job, I wouldn’t get an increase in pay nor a chance of promotion. If I were going to get somewhere I would only get there in New York.

After a few minutes of intensive brooding that got me nowhere, I went into Gina’s office.

Gina Valetti, dark, pretty, gay and twenty-three, had been my secretary and general factotum since I had taken over the Rome office. It had always baffled me that a girl with her looks and shape could have been so smart.

She paused in her typing and looked inquiringly at me.

I told her about Chalmers’s daughter.

“Sounds terrific, doesn’t it?” I said, sitting on the edge of her desk. “Some bouncing, fat undergrad needing my advice and attention: the things I do for Western Telegram.”

“She could be beautiful,” Gina said, her voice cool. “Many American girls are beautiful and attractive. You could fail in love with her. If you married her you would be in a very happy position.”

“You’ve got marriage on the brain,” I said. “All you Italian girls are the same. You haven’t seen Chalmers - I have. She couldn’t possibly be beautiful coming from his stable. Besides, he wouldn’t want me for a son-in-law. He would have a lot bigger ideas for his daughter than me.”

She gave me a long, slow stare from under curled, black eyelashes, then lifted her pretty shoulders.

“Wait ’til you see her,” she said.

For once Gina was wrong, but then so was I. Helen Chalmers didn’t appear to be beautiful, but neither was she fat and bouncing. She seemed to me to be completely negative. She was blonde, and she wore horn-rimmed spectacles, sloppy clothes and flat-heeled shoes. Her hair was screwed back off her face. She seemed as dull as only a very serious-minded college girl can be dull.

I met her at the airport and took her to the Excelsior Hotel. I said the usual polite things one says to a stranger, and she answered as politely. By the time I had got her to the hotel I was so bored with her that I couldn’t get away last enough. I told her to call me at the office if she wanted anything, gave her my telephone number and bowed myself out. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t call me. There was a touch of efficiency about her that convinced me that she could handle any situation that might crop up without my help or advice.

Gina sent flowers to the hotel in my name. She also had composed a cable to Chalmer’s to say the girl had arrived safely. I felt there wasn’t much else for me to do, and, as a couple of good stories broke around this time, I put Miss Chalmers out of my mind and forgot about her.

About ten days later, Gina suggested that I should call the girl and find out how she was, getting on. This I did, but the hotel told me she had left six days ago, and they had no forwarding address.

Gina said I should find out where she was in case Chalmers wanted to know.

“Okay, you find out,” I said. “I’m busy.”

Gina, got her information from police headquarters. It seemed Miss Chalmers had taken a three-room furnished apartment off Via Cavour. Gina got the telephone number and I called her.

She sounded surprised when she came on the line, and I had to repeat my name twice before the nickle dropped. It seemed she had forgotten me as completely as I had forgotten her, and, oddly enough, this irritated me. She said everything was under control, and she was getting along fine, thank you. There was a hint of impatience in her voice that suggested she resented me inquiring about her, and also, she used that polite tone of voice that daughters of very rich men use when talking to their father’s employees, and that infuriated me.

I cut the conversation short, reminded her again that if there was anything I could do I would do it, and hung up.

Gina who had got the set-up from my expression said tactfully, “After all, she is the daughter of a millionaire.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “From now on she can look after herself. She practically gave me the brush-oft.” We left it at that

I heard no more of her for the next four weeks. I had a lot to do in the office as I was going on vacation in a couple of months time, and I wanted everything ship-shape for Jack Maxwell who was coming out from New York to relieve me.

I had planned to spend a week in Venice, and then go south for three weeks to Ischia. This was my first long vacation in four years, and I was looking forward to it. I planned to travel alone. I like a little solitude when I can get it, and I also like to be able to change my mind where to stay and how long I would stay, and if I had a companion, I wouldn’t have this freedom of movement. Four weeks and two days after I had spoken to Helen Chalmers on the telephone, I had a call from Giuseppe Frenzi, a good friend of mine who worked on L’ Italia del Popolo. He asked me to go with him to a party the film producer, Guido Luccino, was throwing in honour of some film star who bad made a big hit at the Venice festival.

I like Italian parties. They are gracious and amusing, and the food is always exciting. I said I would pick him up around eight o’clock.

Luccino had a big apartment near Porta Pinciana. When we got there, the carriage-way was packed with Cadillacs, Rolls-Royces and Bugattis that made my 1954 Buick flinch as I edged it into the last of the parking spaces.

It was a good parry. I knew most of the people there. Fifty per cent of them were Americans, and Luccino, who cultivated Americans, had plenty of hard liquor circulating. Around ten o’clock, and after a flock of straight whiskies, I went out on to the patio to admire the moon and to cool off.

On the patio, alone, was a girl in a white evening gown. Her naked back and shoulders looked like porcelain in the moonlight. She was resting her hands on the balustrade, her head tilted back while she stared up at the moon. The moonlight made her blonde hair look like spun glass. I wandered over to her and paused by her side. I stared up at the moon too.

“Pretty nice after the jungle inside,” I said

“Yes.”

She didn’t turn to look, at me. I sneaked a look at her.

She was beautiful. Her features were small, her lips were a glistening red; the moonlight sparkled in her eyes.

“I thought I knew everyone in Rome,” I said. “How is it I don’t know you?”

She turned her head and looked at me. Then she smiled.

“You should know me, Mr. Dawson,” she said. “Have I changed so much that you don’t recognize me?”

I stared at her, and I felt a sudden thumping of my pulse and a tight feeling across my chest.

“I don’t recognize you,” I said, thinking she was the loveliest woman I had seen in Rome, and how young and desirable she was.

She laughed.

“Are you so sure? I am Helen Chalmers.”

II

My first reaction when I heard who she was was to tell her how she had changed, how surprised I was to find her so beautiful, and stuff like that, but after looking into her moonlit eyes I had other ideas. I knew it would be a mistake to say the obvious.

I spent half an hour with her out on the patio. This unexpected meeting threw me off balance. I was sharply aware that she was my boss’s daughter. She was cagey, too, but she wasn’t dull. We kept the conversation on an impersonal plane. We talked about the party, who was who, and wasn’t the band good and what a lovely night it was.

I was attracted to her the way a pin is attracted to a magnet. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I couldn’t believe this lovely creature was the same girl I had met at the airport: it just didn’t seem possible.

Suddenly, from out of the stilted conversation we were making, she said, “Have you a car here?”

“Why, yes. It’s in the carriage-way.”

“Will you take me back to my apartment?”

“What - now?” I was disappointed. “The party will warm up in a little while. Wouldn’t you like to dance?”

She stared at me. Her blue eyes were disconcertingly searching.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you away. Don’t bother; I can get a taxi.”

“You’re not dragging me away. If you really want to go, I’ll be happy to drive you home. I thought you were enjoying yourself here.”

She lifted her shoulders and smiled.

“Where is your car?”

“At the end of the line — a black Buick.”

“I’ll meet you at the car then.”

She moved away, and as I made to accompany her, she lifted her hand in an unmistakable gesture. She was telling me we shouldn’t be seen together.

I let her go on ahead while I lit a cigarette. This had suddenly become a conspiracy. I noticed my hands were unsteady. I gave her a couple of minutes, then I went back into the vast lounge that was packed with people, looked for Luccino, but couldn’t see him and decided I’d let my thanks drift until to-morrow morning.

I walked out of the apartment, down the flight of stairs and down the long drive.

I found her sitting in the Buick. I got in beside her.

“It is just off Via Cavour.”

I drove away down Via Vittorio Veneto. At this hour the usual heavy traffic had thinned a little, and it only took me ten minutes to reach the street in which she lived. During the drive, neither of us said anything.

“Please stop here,” she said.

I pulled up and got out of the car. I went around and opened the off-side door for her. She got out and looked up and down the deserted street

“You’ll come up? I’m sure we have a lot to talk about,” she said.

I remembered again that she was my boss’s daughter. “I’d like to, but perhaps I’d better not,” I said. “It’s getting late. I don’t want to disturb anyone.”

“You won’t do that.”

She started off down the street, so I turned off the car’s lights and went after her.

I am explaining this in detail because I don’t want to give the wrong impression about my first relations with Helen. It may be difficult to believe, but if I had known there was no one in her apartment — no girl friend, no servant, no nobody — wild horses wouldn’t have dragged me inside. I didn’t know. I thought there would at least be a servant.

All the same I was uneasy about going into her apartment at that time of night I kept wondering what Sherwin Chalmers would think if someone told him I had been seen entering his daughter’s apartment at ten forty-five at night

My future and all that it meant to me was in Chalmers’s hands. A word from him and I would be out of the newspaper racket for good. Fooling around with his daughter could be as dangerous as fooling around with a rattlesnake.

Thinking about it later, I realized that Helen also wasn’t taking any chances. She had prevented me from accompanying her from Luccino’s apartment, and she had fixed it that I had parked my car two hundred yards from the entrance to her apartment block so if one of my bright friends happened to see the car he wouldn’t put two and two together.

We rode up in the automatic elevator, meeting no one in the lobby. We got inside her apartment without anyone seeing us. When she had shut the front door and had taken me into a large pleasant lounge, lit by shaded lamps and decorated with bowls of flowers, I suddenly got the impression that we were the only two in the apartment.

She dropped her wrap on a chair and went over to an elaborate cocktail cabinet.

“Will you have rye or gin?”

“You aren’t alone here, are you?” I asked.

She turned and stared at me. In the shaded lights, she looked stunning.

“Why, yes — is that a crime?”

I felt my palms turn moist.

“I can’t stay. You should know that.”

She continued to stare at me, her eyebrows lifting.

“Are you so frightened of my father then?”

“It’s not a matter of being frightened of your father,” I said, angry that she had so shrewdly put her finger right on the point. “I can’t stay here alone with you, and you must know it.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” she said impatiently. “Can’t you act like an adult? Just because a man and a woman are alone together in an apartment, do they have to misbehave themselves?”

“That’s not the point. It’s what other people will think.”

“What other people?”

She had me there. I knew no one had seen us enter the apartment.

“I could be seen leaving. Besides, it’s the principle of the thing…”

She suddenly burst out laughing.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Stop acting like a Victorian and sit down.”

I should have grabbed my hat and walked out. If I had done that I would have saved myself a lot of trouble, and that’s an understatement. But I have a reckless, irresponsible streak in me that occasionally swamps my usual cautions judgment, and that’s what it did at this moment.

So I sat down and took a stiff rye and crushed ice she gave me and watched her while she fixed a gin and tonic.

I’ve kicked around Rome for four years now and I haven’t led an entirely celibate life. Italian women are good and exciting.

I have had my big moments with them, but as I sat there, looking at Helen in her white dress, I knew this could be the biggest moment of all my moments: this was something special, something that made me short of breath and a little crazy in the head.

She went over to the fireplace and leaned against the overmantel while she regarded me with a half-smile.

Because I knew this was dangerous, and I wouldn’t need much encouragement to walk right into trouble, I said, “Well, how are you making out at the university?”

“Oh, that was just a gag,” she said carelessly. “I had to tell my father some story or he wouldn’t have let me come here alone.”

“You mean you don’t go to the university?”

“Of course I don’t.”

“But won’t he find out?”

“Why should he? He’s too busy to bother about me,” she returned and I caught the bitterness in her voice. “He’s only really interested in himself and his latest woman. I was in the way, so I told him I wanted to study architecture at the university at Rome. As Rome is miles away from New York, and once here, I couldn’t suddenly walk into his room where he might be trying to convince some little gold digger that he is much younger than he looks, he fell over himself to send me here.”

“So the horn specs, the flat-heeled shoes and the scraped-back hair were part of the gag, too?” I said, realizing by telling me this she was making me an accessory, and if Chalmers found out, the chopper might come down on my neck as well as hers.

“Of course. When I’m at home I always dress like that. It convinces my father that I am a serious-minded student. If he saw me as I am now, he would have hired some respectable old lady to chaperone me.”

“You’re pretty cold-blooded about it, aren’t you?”

“Why not?” She moved over and dropped into a lounging chair. “My mother died when I was ten. My father has had three other wives: two of them were only two years older than I am now, and the other was younger. I was as welcome to all of them as an outbreak of polio. I like being on my own: I have lots of fun.”

Looking at her, I could believe she did have lots of fun: probably more than was good for her.

“You’re just a kid, and this is no way for you to live,” I said.

She laughed.

“I’m twenty-four and I’m no kid, and this is the way I want to live.”

“Why tell me all this? What’s to stop me sending a frantic cable to your father, telling him what’s going on?”

She shook her head.

“You won’t do that. I’ve talked to Giuseppe Frenzi about you. He gives you a very good reference. I wouldn’t have brought you up here if I wasn’t sure of you.”

“Just why did you bring me up here?”

She stared at me: the expression in her eyes made me suddenly breathless. There was no mistaking that expression: she was giving me an invitation to go ahead and make love to her.

“I like the look of you,” she said. “One can get very tired of Italian men. They’re so intense and so direct. I asked Giuseppe to bring you to the party, and here we are.”

Don’t imagine I wasn’t tempted. I knew all I had to do was to get up and take her in my arms and there would be no opposition. But it was all a little too blatant; too cold-blooded, and this attitude of hers shocked me. There was also the question of my job. I was more interested in holding on to that than fooling around with her. I got to my feet.

“I see. Well, it’s getting late. I’ve got some work to do before I turn in. I’ll be moving along.”

She stared up at me, her mouth tightening.

“But you can’t go now. You’ve only just come.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”

“You mean, you don’t want to stay?”

“It’s not what I want to do: it’s what I’m going to do.”

She lifted her arms and ran her fingers through her hair. That is perhaps the most provocative gesture a woman can make. If she has the right shape, there is no more telling move she can make than to raise her arms and look at a man as she was looking at me. I nearly fell for it, but not quite.

“I want you to stay.”

I shook my head.

“I really have to go.”

She studied me for a long moment, her eyes expressionless. Then she shrugged, lowered her arms and stood up.

“All right, if that’s the way you feel.” She crossed to the door, opened it and went out into the hall. I went after her and picked up my hat that I had left on the hall chair. She opened the front door, glanced out into the corridor and then stood aside.

I was reluctant to go. I had to force myself out into the corridor.

“Maybe you might like to have dinner with me one night or take in a movie.”

“That would be very nice,” she said politely. “Good night.” She gave me a distant smile and shut the door in my face.

III

Of course it didn’t remain like that. I wish it had, but a relationship between a man like myself and a girl like Helen is certain sooner or later to become complicated.

I tried to put her out of my mind, but I didn’t succeed. I kept seeing the expression in her eyes when I had left her, and that did things to me. I knew I was inviting trouble, and yet there was this fascination about her that made any trouble seem unreal. In my saner moments, I told myself that as far as I was concerned she was rank poison, but in my less saner moments I told myself — who cares?

For the next five or six days she was constantly in my mind. I didn’t tell Gina that I had met Helen at the party, but Gina has an awkward knack of being able to know to some extent what is going on in my mind, and I caught her looking at me several times with a puzzled, inquiring expression.

By the sixth day I was more or less a dead duck. I had got this blonde, lovely girl so much on my mind that I found I wasn’t concentrating on my job. I decided to ease the strain, and when I returned to my apartment, I called her.

There was no answer. I called three times during the evening. At the fourth try, around two o’clock in the morning, I heard the receiver lift and her voice said, “Hello?”

“This is Ed Dawson,” I said.

“Who?”

I grinned into the receiver. That was a little too obvious. That told me she was as interested in me as I was in her.

“Let me jog your memory. I’m the guy who runs the Rome office of the Western Telegram.”

She laughed then.

“Hello, Ed.”

That was better.

“I’m lonely,” I said. “Is there any chance of you coming out with me to-morrow night? I thought if you hadn’t anything better to do, we might have dinner at Alfredo’s.”

“Will you hold on a moment? I must look in my little book.”

I held on, knowing I was being given the treatment and not caring. After a two-minute pause, she came back on the line.

“I can’t manage to-morrow night. I have a date.”

I should have said it was too bad and hung up, but I was too far gone for that.

“Then when can you fix it?”

“Well, I’m free on Friday.”

That was three days ahead.

“Okay, let’s make it Friday night.”

“I’d rather not go to Alfredo’s. Isn’t there somewhere else quieter?”

That brought me up short. If I wasn’t thinking about the danger of us being seen together, she was.

“Yeah, that’s right. How about the little restaurant opposite the Tevi fountain?”

“I’d like that. Yes, that would be lovely.”

“I’ll meet you there. What time?”

“Half-past eight”

“Okay: good-bye for now.”

Life didn’t mean much to me until Friday. I could see Gina was worried about me. For the first time in four years I was short-tempered with her. I couldn’t concentrate, nor could I work up any enthusiasm for the job on hand. I had Helen on my mind.

We had dinner at the little restaurant. It wasn’t a bad dinner, but I can’t say I remember what we ate. I found talking difficult. All I wanted to do was look at her. She was cool, distant, but at the same time, provocative. If she had invited me up to her apartment I would have gone and to hell with Sherwin Chalmers, but she didn’t. She said she would take a taxi home. When I hinted I would go with her, she handed me a beautiful brush-off. I stood outside the restaurant, watching the taxi edge its way up the narrow street until I lost sight of it. Then I walked home, my mind seething. The meeting hadn’t helped: in fact it had made things worse.

Three days later I called her again.

“I’m pretty busy,” she said, when I asked her to come to a movie. “I don’t think I can manage it.”

“I was hoping you could. I’m going on vacation in a couple of weeks time. I won’t be seeing you then for a month.”

“Are you going away for a month?” Her voice had sharpened as if I had caught her interest

“Yes. I’m going to Venice and then on to Ischia. I plan to stay there for about three weeks.”

“Who are you going with?”

“I’m going alone. But never mind that: how about this movie?”

“Well, I might. I don’t know. I’ll call you. I have to go now. There’s someone at the door,” and she hung up.

She didn’t call me for five days. Then, just as I was about to call her, she rang my apartment number,

“I’ve been meaning to telephone you,” she said as soon as I came on the line, “but I haven’t had a moment up to now. Are you doing anything particular right now?”

The time was twenty minutes past midnight. I was about to go to bed.

“You mean right now?”

“Yes.”

“Well, no. I was going to bed.”

“Will you come to my place? Don’t leave your car outside.”

I didn’t hesitate.

“Sure, I’ll be right over.”

I entered her apartment block like a sneak thief, taking elaborate care no one would see me. Her front door was ajar, and all I had to do was to step across the corridor from the elevator into her hall.

I found her in the lounge, sorting through a stack of Long Play records. She was wearing a white silk wrap and her blonde hair was about her shoulders. She looked good, and she knew it

“So you found your way up?” she said, putting the records aside and smiling at me.

“It wasn’t so hard.” I closed the door. “You know, we shouldn’t be doing this: this is the way to start real trouble.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“You don’t have to stay.”

I went over to her.

“I don’t intend to stay. Why did you ask me over?”

“For heaven’s sake, Ed!” she exclaimed impatiently. “Can’t you relax for a moment?”

Now I was alone with her, my caution asserted itself. It was one thing to imagine being alone

with her, but with my job hanging to the consequences of being found out, actually being with her was something else besides. I was sorry now I had come.

“I can relax,” I said. “Look, I’ve got to think of my job. If your father ever found out I was fooling around with you, I’d be through. I mean that He would see I never got another newspaper job as long as I live.”

“Are you fooling around with me?” she asked, opening her eyes very wide and looking surprised.

“You know what I mean.”

“He won’t find out — why should he?”

“He could find out. If I were seen coming here or leaving he could hear of it.”

“Then you must be careful not to be seen. It shouldn’t be difficult.”

“This job means everything to me, Helen. It’s my life.”

“You’re not what I would call a romantic type, are you?” she said and laughed. “My Italian men don’t think about their jobs, they think about me.”

“I’m not talking about your Italian men.”

“Oh, Ed, do sit down and relax. You’re here now, so why are you getting so worked up?”

So I sat down, telling myself that I was crazy in the head to be here.

She went over to the liquor cabinet.

“Will you have a Scotch or rye?”

“A Scotch, I guess.”

I watched her, wondering just why she had asked me over at this time of night. She wasn’t being provocative.

“Oh, Ed, before I forget: would you look at this cine? I bought it yesterday, and the release thing doesn’t work. Do you understand cines?”

She waved to where an expensive leather camera case hung from a chair. I got up, opened the case and took from it a 16 mm. Paillard Bolex with a triple lens turret.

“Hey! This is nice,” I said. “What in the world do you want with an item like this, Helen? It must have cost plenty.”

She laughed.

“It did come high, but I’ve always wanted to own a cine. A girl should have at least one hobby, don’t you think?” She dropped crushed ice into two glasses. “I want a record of my stay in Rome for my old age.”

I turned the camera over in my hands. It suddenly occurred to me that she must be living well beyond the allowance her father was giving her. He had told me he was giving her sixty dollars a week. He had said he didn’t want her to have any more. Knowing the price of apartments in Rome, this one would cost something like forty dollars a week. I looked over at the liquor cabinet that was loaded with every kind of drink. How was she managing to live in this style? Then there was this expensive camera she had suddenly bought.

“Has someone left you a fortune?”

Her eyes flickered, and for a moment she looked confused, but only for a moment.

“I wish they had. Why do you ask?”

“It’s not my business, but all this must cost you a lot, doesn’t it?” I waved my hand to take in the room.

She shrugged.

“I suppose it does. My father gives me a generous allowance. He likes me to live this way.”

She didn’t look at me while she spoke. Even if I hadn’t known exactly how much her father was giving her, the lie was pretty obvious. Although I was puzzled, I realized it wasn’t my business so I changed the subject.

“What’s wrong with the camera then?”

“This release thing won’t work.”

Her finger touched the back of my hand as she pointed. “The safety catch is on,” I said,

showing her. “This thing here. You press it down, and the release then works. They put the safety catch on so the motor won’t run accidentally.”

“For heaven’s sake! I nearly took it back to the shop to-day. I guess I’d better read the book of instructions.” She took the cine from me. “I’ve never been very smart with mechanical things. Look at all the film I’ve bought.” She pointed to where ten cartons of 16 mm. film stood on the desk.

“You’re not going to use all that on Rome, are you?” I said. “You have enough there to photograph the whole of Italy.”

She gave me an odd look that seemed to me to be a little sly. “I’m keeping most of it for Sorrento.”

“Sorrento?” I was puzzled. “Are you going to Sorrento then?”

She smiled.

“You’re not the only one who takes vacations. Have you ever been to Sorrento?”

“No. I’ve never been so far south.”

“I’ve rented a villa just outside Sorrento. It’s lovely and very, very isolated. I flew down to Naples a couple of days ago and arranged everything. I’ve even got a woman from a nearby village to come in and do for me.”

I had a sudden feeling that she wasn’t telling me this without reason. I looked sharply at her.

“Sounds nice,” I said. “When are you going?”

“The same time as you’re going to Ischia.” She put the camera on the table and came over and sat beside me on the settee. “And, like you - I’m going alone.”

She looked at me. The invitation in her eyes set my heart thumping. She leaned towards me, her full, red lips parting. Before I knew what I was doing, she was in my arms, and I was kissing her.

We held that kiss for perhaps twenty seconds, and it really got me going, then I felt her hands on my chest, pushing me back, and that steady, hard pressure brought me to my senses. I let go of her and stood up.

“This is a crazy way to behave,” I said, breathing like an old man who has run up a flight of stairs. I wiped the lipstick off my mouth.

“A crazy way to behave in Rome,” she said, leaning back and smiling up at me, “but not in Sorrento.”

’’Now, look…” I began, but she held up her hand, stopping me.

“I know how you feel about me. I’m not a child. I feel the same way about you,” she said. “Come with me to Sorrento. Everything’s arranged. I know how you feel about father and your job, but I promise you it will be perfectly safe. I’ve rented the villa in the names of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Sherrard. You’ll be Mr. Sherrard, an American business man on vacation. No one knows us down there. Don’t you want to spend a month with me — just the two of us?”

“But we can’t do it,” I said, knowing there was no reason why we shouldn’t do it, and wanting to. “We can’t rush into it like this…”

“Don’t be so cautious, darling. We’re not rushing into anything. I’ve planned it most carefully. I’ll go down to the villa in my car. You’ll come down the next day by train. It’s a lovely place. It faces the sea on a high hill. There’s no other villa for at least a quarter of a mile.” She jumped to her feet and fetched a large-scale map that was lying on the table. “I’ll show you exactly where it is. Look, it’s marked on the map. It’s called Bella Vista — isn’t that cute? From the terrace you can see the bay and Capri. It has a garden: there are orange and lemon trees and vines. It’s completely isolated. You’ll love it.”

“I dare say I will, Helen,” I said. “I admit I’d like to do it. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t, but what’s going to happen to us after the month’s over?”

She laughed.

“If you mean you’re scared I shall expect you to marry me, you needn’t be. I’m not going to get married for years. This is something I want to get out of my system. I don’t even know that I love you, Ed, but I do know I want to be alone with you for a month.”

“We can’t do it, Helen. It’s not right…”

She touched my face with her fingers.

“Will you be a darling and go now?” She patted my face and then moved away from me. “I’ve only just got back from Naples, and I am very tired. There’s nothing more to talk about. I promise you it will be safe. It now depends whether you want to spend a month with me or not. I promise you there’ll be no strings to it. Think about it. Don’t let’s meet now until the 29th. I’ll be at Sorrento station to meet the three-thirty train from Naples. If you’re not on the train, I’ll understand.”

She crossed to the lobby and opened the front door a few inches.

I joined her.

“Now, wait, Helen…”

“Please, Ed. Don’t let’s say any more. You’ll either be on the train or you won’t. That’s all there is to it.” Her lips brushed mine. “Good night, darling.”

I looked at her and she looked at me.

As I stepped out into the corridor, I knew I would be on that train.