You Find Him – I'll Fix Him

  "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.