If This Be Destiny

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

A captivating love story from the 100-million-copy bestselling Queen of Romance, first published in 1941, and available now for the first time in eBook.

Release date: March 27, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 256

Sample

Brigit, the plump, flaxen-haired Norwegian maid, drew aside the bedroom curtains, placed a glass of hot water with a thin slice of lemon floating upon it, on the table beside the big divan bed and smiled as she looked around her.

The usual confusion met her gaze, but it did not worry her. She was as good tempered as she was plump and she adored her ‘little lady’ who was still asleep, buried under fleecy blankets and rose-silk eiderdown.

Poor lamb! Brigit thought, she works so hard and so late, that it’s no wonder she sleeps late. Ten o’clock it was! The pallid wintry light filtered through the gossamer net curtains; barely enough to illuminate the room on this cold November morning. Down below this big block of flats, overlooking Hyde Park, the great city roared. The balloon barrage was up high in the air. A company of men in khaki went clanking down the street. Another busy day of the Greater War had begun.

Brigit looked at the headlines on the paper which she had brought with her lady’s letters. Nothing but stale news about the war, she thought. She was sick of it even after three months. She was much more interested in what she had seen in the hall on the front page of a daily pictorial. A photograph of a lovely girl in a white evening gown with a billowing skirt sewn with sequins, and flowers in her hair. She was standing by a piano at which a good-looking young man was seated, and underneath this photograph it said:

‘Cara-with-Claude last night at the Café de Paris.’

It had gone on to say what a brilliant success Cara’s new turn had been and that her exquisite dancing was drawing everybody at the Midnight Cabaret to see her.

Cara was Brigit’s little lady. And there she lay, the blessed angel, too tired to open her lovely eyes. But she must wake up because she had a rehearsal here with Mr. Claude this morning. He was coming at eleven.

Brigit opened the door which led into a luxurious modern bathroom and turned on the hot water, flinging a handful of salts which exhaled the fragrance which everybody associated with Cara. A new perfume which had been specially made for her in Paris and named in honour of her, ‘Nuits de Cara’.

Brigit returned to the bedroom and began to pick up silk stockings, gossamer lingerie, odd things which had fallen to the floor right and left. Then the figure under the bedclothes stirred. A voice said sleepily:

‘I hate you, Brigit. Go away and let me sleep.’

‘But, my lady!’ protested Brigit, showing her white teeth in a smile, ‘you must start to wake up. Mr. Claude come and your letters come. Fan-mail come. Look!’

Proudly Brigit produced a tray full of letters for her mistress to see.

Cara sat up and with slender rose-tipped fingers rubbed her drowsy eyes.

She blinked at the letters and began to sift them through. She was never bored with her fan-mail. She liked the silly girls who wrote and asked her what face creams she used, or where she got her clothes; and the foolish men who begged her for ‘dates’. Some even sent her proposals of marriage.

Brigit, still tidying up, glanced smilingly now and again at Cara. She had thought many times that her little lady was like a figure of Dresden china. So small and fragile, sitting up in that big bed, she looked like a child. She had exquisite features, nose tip-tilted, huge violet-blue eyes, and incredibly long lashes. Hair a true platinum colour, of a silver fairness that no artifice could manœuvre. And Brigit loved Cara not only because she was lovely and a big success … but because she was kind. A gentle and considerate mistress, generous to those who were poor. Didn’t Brigit know what a lot her little lady did for struggling chorus girls who were not as lucky as herself … and how she supported her old uncle who was retired the Marines with an invalid wife. How little she had been spoiled by having the theatre world at her feet.

Brigit said:

‘I go for my lady’s breakfast. Grape fruit, this morning, yes, no?’

Cara nodded. Brigit retired. Cara was wide awake now, reading her letters, humming the tune of that new success which Claude, her partner, had written for her.

‘One day you’ll know

How much I care …’

Then she stopped humming. She was reading a letter with a censor’s stamp on it. A letter from France. And the next moment she lifted the ivory telephone from behind her bed, almost knocking over a vase of pink roses in her excitement.

She dialled Claude’s number. As soon as she heard his voice:

‘Claude, Claude, come round at once. I’ve got marvellous news.’

His voice came with a yawn.

‘My dear! How too devastatingly early you are. What is the news? What. Something about us giving a turn in France to the troops? What a loathsome idea. Oh, all right, I’ll talk to you about it, but it certainly doesn’t appeal to me. …’

Cara sprang out of bed. It was warm here in her centrally heated room. She cared nothing for the yellowish gloom outside and the fact that it looked like snow, and she could think of nothing but this news that had just come through.

Bobby Hawton, big theatrical producer, had formed a show which he called ‘Allied Entertainment Ltd.’ The A.E.L. So far, he had got most of England’s leading artistes to go to France and do as Gracie Fields had done … give their services voluntarily for the entertainment of the troops. When Cara had last seen Bobby in town he had told her that he wanted her to go over, and she had said there was nothing she would like better than to do her bit. Now it was all through. He could arrange permit and transport for her through the A.E.L. next week.

When Claude arrived at Cara’s flat, she was already waiting for him in the big beautiful studio which served as her drawingroom. A charming room, decorated in green and gold, with a black Blüthner baby-grand at one end, and a parquet floor on which she could practise her dance turns with Claude.

She was dressed in the blue slacks and thin blue shirt-blouse in which she liked to rehearse. Her fair hair was tied up with a gay silk handkerchief. She rushed to Claude, waving Bobby’s letter.

The young man took it, read through it, then seated himself at the piano and began to run his fingers over the keys. Cara looked at him anxiously. Why didn’t he say something about the letter? Impatiently she asked him what he thought about it?

‘Isn’t it a grand chance for us to do our bit for the country, darling? After all, you’ve got that unfortunate lung which makes you unfit for service and I’m not the sort to make a good nurse. But we can at least bring pleasure to those boys out there. I’m just crazy to go.’

Claude stopped playing and turned to her.

‘Cara, my sweet, “crazy” is the word. It would be crazy for us to go. Why there’s nothing in it for us! I admit our engagement at the Café de Natal ends this week, but we can easily get another and if we go to France for the A.E.L. we’d be singing to audiences who’ll never buy seats to see any of the shows we give at home. It will be no advertisement for us at all, and just an utter waste of time and money.’

Cara stared. The eager anticipation in her violet-blue eyes changed to a look of astonishment and dismay.

‘But, Claude, what’s it matter about advertisement. These men are fighting for us. They are fighting to keep us safe in places like the Café de Natal, and the theatres in which we play. They are fighting so that you and I can have the home we are going to share one day. I think that it is not only an honour that the A.E.L. have asked us, but that it is our duty to go. There’s a war on, Claude, and as we are English, it’s our war too.’

Claude played a couple of arpeggios, hunching his shoulders.

‘I know there’s a war on. And a very good chance of us being sunk in the Channel or hit by a bomb in France. It doesn’t appeal to me, my sweet.’

For a moment she did not answer. She felt too stupefied. Although she had never regarded Claude as a man who would make a soldier, the last thing she had ever imagined was that he was a coward. Not only a coward, but a man who thought of promoting his own chances before ‘doing his bit’ for the country.

She began to argue with him violently. She had never felt more violent about anything. She told him they must go. She had told Bobby they would go. The A.E.L. expected them. She was working herself up into a state about it.

Claude argued back, without violence. He wasn’t capable of being violent about anything. He was much too indolent. Arguing made his head ache. And he couldn’t bear, he said, to see Cara in this mood. All patriotic and ‘het up’ for England: Really, it didn’t suit her, he said. She should be herself … just the lovely, glamorous girl who charmed audiences with her lithe grace, her inimitable charm of voice and movement.

Cara ceased to argue. Hands in the pockets of her slacks, she stood looking at Claude, flabbergasted.

Although she had worked with him side by side, in endless rehearsals … thousands of performances, in all parts of the country … for the last three years … she had never grown really used to Claude. His good looks, his charm, quite apart from his talents, had never grown stale for her. Even this morning in spite of her disappointment in him, she had to admit there was just something about Claude which was enough to break any woman’s heart.

He was, as always, perfectly dressed … although perhaps the pale grey flannels with that dark blue shirt and yellow tie were just a little theatrical. The shoulders were a little too padded. His suede shoes on the pointed side. And that glistening black hair a little too long. But somehow it went with his personality. And he had such a pale, poetic face, wide dreamy dark eyes. Every movement was graceful. He could accompany her as nobody else in the world could do. He was a good musician. His songs were not very clever and not always original; a bit trite at times. But they were popular.

He seemed to get away with it. His gramophone records sold like wildfire. His fan-mail was as big as hers. And she adored him. She had loved him faithfully and devotedly for the last three years. And as far as she knew he loved her. It had been understood between them that they should complete their partnership by getting married, as soon as they had consolidated their position.

‘Darling, you are giving me a look!’ he reproached her, gave her one of his entrancing smiles. He held out a hand. ‘Come and be kissed and don’t talk about the A.E.L. any more. I don’t want to go and I don’t want you to go. So forget it and let’s start rehearsing.’

Slowly, Cara moved toward the piano. Mechanically she placed one of her hands in his and he bent his dark handsome head and kissed the rosy palm. But for once she did not thrill to his lips. Her mind was full of conflicting thoughts and her spirits were going down … down … The more she thought of Claude’s refusal of the A.E.L.’s invitation, the more wretched and disappointed she felt.

Once or twice last summer, just before war broke out, she had wondered how much she really meant to Claude, not as a theatrical partner, but as a woman. He had so many opportunities to marry her. There was no earthly reason why they shouldn’t set up that home about which they had talked so often, but he had done nothing about it. He had seemed content to let the days drift by without offering her the home which her woman’s heart desired. It seemed enough for him to make love to her in his graceful, careless way; to be seen in public with her always; to be applauded with her. But she wanted more than that.

Try as she would to stamp on the feeling, it had struck Cara recently that Claude was becoming hopelessly spoiled. Spoiled and ungrateful. For it was to her that he owed everything … everything. She drew her hand away from his, a hurt look in her eyes, walked across the polished floor and stood at the window staring down at the street. Her thoughts were not with the present now but winging back to the past.

She had met Claude when they were together in revue four years ago. She had been just a chorus girl then, and he her male number. They had danced and sung together and gradually fallen in love. In those days Claude had been unspoiled, much more thoughtful and kind. He was alone in the world and so was she. They both had to work hard for a poor return and when they went out together they shared-and-shared-alike. They were happy riding hand in hand on the top of a bus or eating in a cheap Soho restaurant when funds allowed.

So far as her art went, Cara knew that she was good. She knew it. But Claude wasn’t so good. He was a bad dancer. He only just ‘got through’ as a chorus boy.

But Cara recognized his other talents. That knack he had of composing a little song … his charming touch on the piano. Nobody had ever bought one of his compositions or allowed him to sing them. And when he had first come in contact with Cara … he was twenty-three then, three years older than herself … it had looked as though failure stared him in the face. It was Cara who had fired him with ambition and Cara who had urged him to write. She who sang his songs over for him, made suggestions, improvements. She who decided that when their revue came off they would finish with the chorus. As ‘CARA-WITH-CLAUDE’ they would team up and try to get an audition in front of a man like Cochrane’or Basil Dean.

It wasn’t easy. For weeks they practised. Their first audition failed. Claude, who was easily discouraged, so much the weaker character of the two, was all for giving up the effort and going back to chorus work. But Cara had courage … driving power. And finally they did land a ‘Circuit tour’.

She winced, even this morning, at the memory of those days. God! how she had had to slave … and carry Claude along with her on the tide of her own enthusiasm! They hadn’t been an overnight success.

Then, Claude gave up singing and left that to Cara. She sang and she danced and gradually recognition came to them. The slender fair-haired girl who danced so cleverly and sang with such appeal found her mark. And Claude found his with that first ‘song-hit’ of his, Dancing for You.

As Cara sang it, it was a triumph. Bobby Hawton took them up. Agents pursued. Reporters and photographers besieged. London wanted them in a revue. A cabaret offered them big money to do a midnight show. The B.B.C. suggested they should come on the air in a guest night.

CARA-WITH-CLAUDE had arrived and were in the money.

And who was to know that Cara was really just a girl born in a suburban town, of ordinary middle-class parents, as Mary Brown, and that Claude’s real name was Charlie Baines, son of a Welsh coalminer.

‘What’s in a name?’ … Shakespeare said. … But in the theatre world there was a whole lot in it, thought Clara.

She turned and looked at the young man who was once again running his fingers over the piano keys. Her heart was sinking, sinking. Why, only a few months ago when war broke out, Claude had been depressed because they did not find it so easy to get engagements, and he had been quick to point out that it would be madness for them to get married with a war on, and she had been much too proud to argue. Even now, when the theatres and cabarets were in full swing again, with half the audience in uniform, Claude hadn’t come up to scratch.

‘Come and sing to me, angel,’ he called to her.

Flushed and tight-lipped, she answered:

‘If you won’t go to France, I shall go alone.’

He swung round, his poetic face a mask of anger.

‘You can’t possibly. You can’t break our act.’

‘It’s you who are breaking it up. You who won’t come with me.’

Another argument.

Claude began to sneer. How did she think she was going to put over her act for the A.E.L. without him?

‘Some frightful fellow in uniform may offer to play for you, but he won’t cover you up when you make a wrong note nor when you miss your step.’

Cara’s face changed from pink to white. Her lovely body trembled.

‘Since when have I made mistakes?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘I don’t want to point these things out, but you leave me no other course.’

Her hands clenched.

‘Very well, I shall go alone and make all the mistakes I like. Men in uniform won’t notice them.’

His hand crashed down on the piano in a dischord.

‘Men in uniform!’ he repeated. ‘So that’s the attraction. Little Cara is tired of Claude with his dickey lung and wants a big strong man in uniform!’

Wrought up and miserable, Cara burst into tears.

‘That isn’t true. You’re cruel to say so. You know how deeply I love you.’

The argument went on, and finally Claude sprang to his feet and dropped the piano lid with a crash. His dark eyes were furious, thwarted.

‘If you go to France and break up our act, it’s the finish,’ he said. ‘I’ll never play or compose for you again.’

Bewildered, Cara looked around her studio. Claude had gone. She heard the front door close. Claude, in a childish rage, had slammed it.

That night in the Café de Natal, the CARA-WITH-CLAUDE act was an even bigger success than usual. Claude had never played so well and Cara’s dancing was superlative. Particularly in that new song-hit of theirs Flying High when Cara wore a dress of Air Force blue and there seemed indeed to be wings to her feet as she moved, a joyous radiant figure in the spotlight. A young Air Force officer, sitting at one of the front tables, got up and tossed a model aeroplane into her hands, which brought a roar of applause. She felt stirred and patriotic and all the more determined to go abroad and entertain those young men who were ready and willing to risk their lives for their country. She was glad that she had rung up Bobby’s manager and told him to let Mr. Hawton know that she would be over in France on the suggested date. Unfortunately, she said, she must find an accompanist out there because Claude had ‘pressing engagements,’ and could not be released.

She covered Claude with that lie, because she could not bear that he should be labelled a man who refused to cross the Channel to entertain the troops.

She had whispered to him what she had done, just before their show went on. He. had looked at her coldly without replying. But during their turn he was gay as ever, smiling at her, rising from the piano to applaud her with the rest of the audience at the end of her dance. Oh, Claude was a good showman!

It was customary for them to have supper together once their turn was over. Sometimes Claude took Cara to the Savoy or the Dorchester or they stayed here … it was all part of his advertising scheme. To-night, while she changed out of her blue dress into black velvet and the blue fox coat which had been Claude’s Christmas present to her, she thought of him with renewed tenderness.

They mustn’t quarrel. They couldn’t … after all the years they had worked together. She loved him so much. Surely she would be able to change his mind for him. She would use all the influence over him which she knew that she had. When she chose to be soft and beguiling in his arms, he surely would not resist her. He would go to France with her next week.

But any such hopes were soon dashed to the ground. When Cara looked for her partner she found that he had gone. One of the commissionaires told her that ‘Mr. Claude’ had already left the Café de Natal, alone.

For a moment Cara was dumbfounded. She could not believe it possible that Claude would treat her in that way. Did she mean so little to him that he could hurt her, strike back at her like this just because she would not agree to turn down the A.E.L.? Oh, it was mean, cruel of him!

Cara sat alone in her luxurious car, driving through the park to her flat. It was so dark, so strangely dark in the black-out and there was darkness in her heart. The radiant dancer who had been the rage of the evening was just a hurt, disappointed girl, sitting in a corner with tears rolling down her cheeks.

But nothing, not even this attitude on Claude’s part would alter her determination to go to France.

She slept uneasily that night and was awake long before Brigit came in to draw the curtains, which was unusual for Cara. And—what was even more unusual—she could not bear to lie in bed for breakfast. She had her bath and was dressed by nine o’clock, in the old jersey and slacks, walking up and down the studio trying to make up her mind what to do about Claude.

She knew perfectly well that it was up to him to apologize for his boorish treatment of her last night and that she would be lacking in pride if she made the first effort toward reconciliation. On the other hand, she asked herself what pride was worth when one loved a person? Claude was, and always had been, a spoiled child. Deeply though she resented his behaviour, and his unpatriotic refusal to accept the job with A.E.L., she still loved him. This temporary break with Claude hurt and frightened her. They were so closely knit it was not conceivable that any misunderstanding should really separate them.

After half an hour of restless pacing, she approached the telephone, sat on the stool before the fire, and dialled Claude’s number.

His sleepy voice answered in an irritable way:

‘Yes, who is it?’

‘Good morning, Claude,’ she said firmly, ‘I——’

There was a click the other end of the wire.

‘Claude!’ said Cara sharply.

The dialling tone, rolling steadily, answered her. It was obvious that Claude had put down his receiver upon hearing her voice.

That was too much for her. She replaced her own receiver and jumped to her feet, her cheeks flaming with anger and humiliation. How dared he? How dared he treat her like that?

She marched to her bureau, found notepaper and pen, and began to write. The pen was dry—she called furiously for Brigit.

‘Ink! Brigit, bring me some ink.’

The Norwegian maid came hurrying in with an ink bottle, smiling as usual.

‘What orders for today, my lady?’

‘None,’ said Cara. ‘Get out and leave me alone.’

Brigit departed, still smiling. She was the perfect maid and she thought she understood the theatrical temperament. It was not often she saw her little lady in a temper, but if she chose to get into one, she must surely have the right.

Cara wrote to Claude:

‘You are behaving disgracefully, and it will be a long time before I forget your rudeness to me last night and this morning. You seem to forget that we are engaged to be married as well as partners in a show. If you wish me to return your ring, and end everything between us, please say so, right out. But I will not tolerate this childish and unreasoning conduct on your part just because you do not want to go to France with me.

‘I think it is our duty to do something for the troops and I am ashamed of your lack of any patriotic feeling. Please let me know what you mean to do before we put on our show tonight or I shall refuse to dance with you, and you can make what excuses you like to the management.

‘Yours, deeply wounded,

C.’            

This letter she sent by special messenger to Claude’s flat. Then telling herself she was still the one and only Cara and that she was not going to let Claude wreck the world for her, she went off to Etoile to have her hair and her nails done, and wondered grimly what his reply would be.

At Etoile’s she had the usual warm reception. The clever young hairdresser who was used to serving her made the usual highly complimentary remarks about the exquisite colour and texture of her hair. The pretty girl who filed her nails looked admiringly at the famous cabaret star and added her own word of flattery.

Cara smiled at them both. But those smiles were purely theatrical. She was really a very miserable girl in t. . .