Fit the first (Vous l'avez voulu)
I met L nearly two years ago; I was a normal middle-aged man and my life had passed according to the modern pattern of serial monogamy, a few relatively intense relationships, some more which had been less important. I had been married for eleven years, and had known for a long time that the marriage was wrong and mistaken, but for reasons of cowardice, inertia and not wanting to screw it up for the children, had put up with the shit.
L was appointed to a job where I work and came to a meeting before her starting date. She was tall, slim, dark haired and eyed; at times her beauty seems to me to have a medieval quality, sometimes classical. She impressed me straight away: beautiful, clever, gay and possessed of a very fine wit. I thought her a remarkable young woman but I convinced myself, no more. We talked a little. When she took up her post she had a meeting with me as part of her induction; I was gauche and nervous, but she seemed not to mind.
Both she and I were commuting and found we often shared the same train, so we would chat easily and we started to e-mail each other: she had a charming way of mixing work and the personal in messages, I was constantly thinking of ways to amuse her began to look fretfully for her on the platform at the station where she got on. If she wasn’t there in the morning, I would be more disappointed than was reasonable. I knew from our conversations that she had a boyfriend, but had a sense that they were not especially close, indeed I wondered if they were not splitting up.
Every modern workplace has meetings the way people used to have mice; but with her these were fun. But once the head of the organisation, a pompous and vain man, bullied her in a meeting; she was upset and near tears, and I was both furious on her behalf and terribly worried about her. There were also social events, where we discovered a shared weakness for drinking to excess.
As summer passed our e-mails became more and more personal and work content dwindled to nothing. She moved (without her boyfriend) and so we no longer met while commuting, but I would dream up spurious reasons for meetings with her.
Autumn was very very busy and at the end of the most hectic week there was an afternoon drinks party; she and I drank a lot and she had to travel to London to meet her boyfriend. We decided to travel together and a friend drove us to the station. At the station I lit her cigarette, the first time I’d done this for someone for a long time, and bought a bottle of wine for the journey. We drank and talked all the way to London, and I can’t recall a lot of our conversation, expect that it was intimate and simultaneously serious and gay in tone. But at one point she asked me about my wife and whether I had experienced a lightning-flash moment when I knew she was the one; (this is neither time nor place to discuss this, but for the purposes of this narrative all you need know that this was certainly not the case); I made some sort of lame answer to L, but at that very moment experienced just such an epiphany, for I knew with a palpable shock that it was she who was the one. Tipsy as I was, I didn’t dare say anything and the journey and conversation continued to London, where we stayed in the carriage talking after the train had arrived and all other passengers had left.
Eventually we made out way to the Underground and took the same line; when we reached the station where we had to part we kissed. By now I was in something of a state; rather than stay underground and change lines for the tube home, I found myself going up to the street and out into a park where I sat for some time in a bewildered trance.
I have speculated so often since then in a length-of-Cleopatra’s-nose sort of way what might have happened if we hadn’t parted that evening; how things might be now if we had each said to hell with those waiting for us and had taken ourselves off to wander drunkenly round London all evening and all night.
There'll be more of this, I'm sorry to say. If it's so exciting you can't wait, then look at my archives.
L was appointed to a job where I work and came to a meeting before her starting date. She was tall, slim, dark haired and eyed; at times her beauty seems to me to have a medieval quality, sometimes classical. She impressed me straight away: beautiful, clever, gay and possessed of a very fine wit. I thought her a remarkable young woman but I convinced myself, no more. We talked a little. When she took up her post she had a meeting with me as part of her induction; I was gauche and nervous, but she seemed not to mind.
Both she and I were commuting and found we often shared the same train, so we would chat easily and we started to e-mail each other: she had a charming way of mixing work and the personal in messages, I was constantly thinking of ways to amuse her began to look fretfully for her on the platform at the station where she got on. If she wasn’t there in the morning, I would be more disappointed than was reasonable. I knew from our conversations that she had a boyfriend, but had a sense that they were not especially close, indeed I wondered if they were not splitting up.
Every modern workplace has meetings the way people used to have mice; but with her these were fun. But once the head of the organisation, a pompous and vain man, bullied her in a meeting; she was upset and near tears, and I was both furious on her behalf and terribly worried about her. There were also social events, where we discovered a shared weakness for drinking to excess.
As summer passed our e-mails became more and more personal and work content dwindled to nothing. She moved (without her boyfriend) and so we no longer met while commuting, but I would dream up spurious reasons for meetings with her.
Autumn was very very busy and at the end of the most hectic week there was an afternoon drinks party; she and I drank a lot and she had to travel to London to meet her boyfriend. We decided to travel together and a friend drove us to the station. At the station I lit her cigarette, the first time I’d done this for someone for a long time, and bought a bottle of wine for the journey. We drank and talked all the way to London, and I can’t recall a lot of our conversation, expect that it was intimate and simultaneously serious and gay in tone. But at one point she asked me about my wife and whether I had experienced a lightning-flash moment when I knew she was the one; (this is neither time nor place to discuss this, but for the purposes of this narrative all you need know that this was certainly not the case); I made some sort of lame answer to L, but at that very moment experienced just such an epiphany, for I knew with a palpable shock that it was she who was the one. Tipsy as I was, I didn’t dare say anything and the journey and conversation continued to London, where we stayed in the carriage talking after the train had arrived and all other passengers had left.
Eventually we made out way to the Underground and took the same line; when we reached the station where we had to part we kissed. By now I was in something of a state; rather than stay underground and change lines for the tube home, I found myself going up to the street and out into a park where I sat for some time in a bewildered trance.
I have speculated so often since then in a length-of-Cleopatra’s-nose sort of way what might have happened if we hadn’t parted that evening; how things might be now if we had each said to hell with those waiting for us and had taken ourselves off to wander drunkenly round London all evening and all night.
There'll be more of this, I'm sorry to say. If it's so exciting you can't wait, then look at my archives.
posted by Lovelorn Swain | 8:34 am
