These events actually happened, to me, in London, in the 1970s. This is an abridged version of a much longer account I wrote last year. It is fully copyrighted.
At the fall of Saigon, thousands of desperate people swarmed around the last few planes leaving from Saigon Airport. Unforgettable images on TV. Now largely forgotten of course. That was in 1975.
Not among those people was a wealthy Vietnamese politician and businessman who, in 1972, had been appointed to serve as one of his country's observers at what had come to be known as the Paris Peace Talks. Seeing the writing on the wall, he had taken with him his family and what part of his fortune he could convert to diamonds. Once there he sought and obtained asylum in France, where in fact he had been educated.
He was eager that his beautiful daughter, Chloe, then 23 years old, should become fluent in English β she was already fluent in French β and he arranged for her to spend a year living in London. She was lodged with an English couple he knew, the Bains's, in Kensington, a fashionable district of London.
Sir Michael Bains was a senior English diplomat sent to monitor the Paris Peace Talks for the English government, and it was there that he had met and become friendly with Chloe's father.
The Bains' own children were grown, and it was exceedingly generous of them to take in this young Vietnamese woman, a stranger to London, who initially needed a lot of hand-holding. Though Chloe's English turned out to be fairly reasonable, if limited, it was spoken with a strange and sometimes almost incomprehensible Viet-Yankee-French accent. (For example her word for 'lift' was "errervayer".)
The Bains' house, a mansion really, backed onto a small private park, shared only with a little circle of other Kensington houses, most of them mansions too. In one of those other houses there had grown up a boy named Andrew Wilson β me. The house belonged to my father, Sir Andrew Wilson, and my mother, Lady Jane ("My sweet Lady Jane" as her friends mercilessly teased her after the release of "Aftermath").
At the time Chloe was taken in by the Bains I was 25 years old. The two families were fairly close β I had grown up playing with the Bains children β and when they decided someone should show Chloe some of Kensington's younger social life, it fell to me. Lady Bains told me - "No speaking French with her! - she has to get to know good idiomatic English."
It was a favour, but a chore too. Lady Bains knew very well that in younger Kensington society, being Vietnamese would be like being Martian.
But once I'd actually seen her, any doubts I had about it vanished.
* * *
Chloe wasn't just pretty; she was one of those people that turns every head when they walk into a room, both the men and the women. And her innate beauty wasn't ethereal or delicate, it was sexy and vivacious, sparkling. I was completely smitten by the end of the first evening, which we spent watching a play. A boring play. As we walked down to Piccadilly to get a taxi I asked her if she'd enjoyed it (I didn't realise at this point that she spoke quite good English).
"What did you think of the play, Chloe?"
"Well ..."
"I thought it was boring. Pretentious and verbose and ... well, just
pseud
"
"I don't know those words, but, if you are say the play was ...
garbage
... I, I, I ... am of that opinion too.."
* * *
Over the next month I took her somewhere at least three nights a week, a gallery, a walk along the Embankment, my local pub, where she caused a stir in an English sort of way, and another one up in Islington that really good live music, to Lord Delaroy's 25th birthday party (I'd been to school with him), a restaurant, a film - there was an art-house cinema not very far away from my house, a bit of a dive but we went there too - another play, anything I could think of to be in her company.
I was anxious that she should like me, but that simply wasn't an issue - she clearly liked me right from the beginning, we talked easily and we laughed, she loved to laugh, and we talked about ourselves and everything under the sun. Of course at some point these easy, straight-forward encounters came to infused with an unspoken sexual ambience, slight, but undeniably there. We didn't flirt, we didn't even approach it, but of course it's almost impossible to ignore these things.
She gave me a little double-kiss each night when I took her back to the Bains's place. One night when we were walking back there from the cinema the conversation turned to friends, and I clumsily remarked that it must be hard for her to be in this strange city where she had no friends. And Chloe said, without any drama, completely naturally "But I do have friend!
You
are my friend!"
I was pleased, to say the least. When we reached the Bains house a minute later, instead of giving me my usual little kiss, she put her arms around me and held herself against me for a few seconds. He body pressed on me and I could feel every curve and detail, her breasts squashed on my chest, her flat tight tummy. Trouble was, it made me half-stiff almost instantly, and I was sure she must have felt it.
Delaroy had told me that chaperoning Chloe must be onerous because I must be stiff all the time. But he volunteered to take my place if I should tire of it. And he cautioned me - "you know, these upper-crust Vietnamese girls don't do casual sex. If you go with her for three years she might, just might, let you hold her hand."
* * *
A few nights later I took her over to Gavroche, at that time by far the best French restaurant in London, arguably still the best. It was still on Sloane Street back then. Chloe turned every head, dressed simply but with an elegance that no further adornment could enhance. One of the Roux brothers came over to our table at some point and Chloe spoke with him in rapid and impeccable French. I'm fluent, but Chloe was flawless. And she ate like a horse and drank like a fish, and by the time we left she was decidedly tipsy.
We piled into a taxi. I didn't think she should drink anything more but I didn't want the evening to end, so I told the driver to take us down to the Embankment. We would walk one of the bridges.
Chloe leaned across onto my shoulder and said to me, in French
"I didn't know you spoke French so well"
"Thank you. You too. But we mustn't speak French. You must speak ... "