together.
I moved to the country but kept the flat on, and however long I had been away I would always look out of the window on my return and there she would be at 8.00 a.m., wrapping a towel round her head and flicking the ends over one broad shoulder. It became one of the certainties of my life.
She must have been about 25 when I first saw her, which would have made her 40 towards the end, but the years were not unkind, though this might have been a tribute to the attention she lavished on her body. As someone said of Robespierre, he was busy every day of his life. And she was busy. That daily half-hour in the window was like landscape gardening to her, with her body the landscape. It couldn’t have been exhibitionism; she was too engrossed in what she was about. She was there at her most vulnerable, before the make-up went on, and make-up meant a lot to her. No astronaut prepared himself for space the way she did for the office.
When I saw her first it was a June morning and the sun was full on her; I thought it the most erotic sight I had ever seen and felt guilty. Anyone who has lived in London will have seen something like this once or twice, but she was there again the next day, and the next, so obsession replaced guilt. It got to the point where one morning, seeing her about to go out, I rushed outside and we collided in the street. She was very tall, not beautiful — her face had that bleached, expressionless look of some Scandinavian women. I said, ‘Sorry’ and she gave a tight little smile. We never met again.
The American filmmaker James Hill, producer of The Sweet Smell of Success , was staying with me at that time and the situation intrigued him. He saw it as a short film and kept dreaming up scripts, but each of these, in true Hollywood fashion, had a resolution. They required me to meet her. I wasn’t keen on this. I mean, what would my first words have been? ‘You won’t know me, but I feel I know you very well’? Slam. ‘I live opposite and every morning I see you in your window’? Smack. In the end Hill agreed. ‘Guess we’ll have to work on this one.’ But we never did.
Besides, the relationship had moved on. Familiarity buried the obsession and the morning came when I realised I was looking at that body with the lack of interest of an old, married man. Yet I was proud of it in a distant way, and it puzzled me that she should always be alone. Then that too changed, for one morning, ten years after I first saw her, there was a man there — a big, fat chap with a moustache. For the few months he was there I was sad, for I felt he was not good enough for her, my Diana in the Georgian window.
I got married about this time and when my wife stayed in the flat I told her about this lady. As if on cue, she appeared at that moment. My wife, whose eyesight is not good, leaned out, the curtains blowing behind her, and that was the only time the Lady of Shalott looked out. A blind I had never seen before was hastily pulled down, but the next week it was up again.
I don’t know when she left her flat. All I know is that a week ago I looked across and there was someone else there. A stocky brunette stood shamelessly in the window, naked as a penny piece. And I closed the curtains.
When a Young Man’s Dreams Expire
MOMENT OF SOCIAL HISTORY . It was Sunday morning, just after breakfast, in the junior common room of an Oxford college deserted except for two men, both middle-aged and moving with edgy stateliness, for this was the morning after the night before. They had stopped in front of a long metal box fixed at chest-level to the wall; there was no other form of ornament, so the box dominated not only the wall but the whole room.
‘Incredible,’ said one of them, a northern GP, shaking his head. ‘I mean, what sort of people are these, for God’s sake? Can you imagine going anywhere near that thing with everyone looking?’
I should add that this was once a man very active in that
I moved to the country but kept the flat on, and however long I had been away I would always look out of the window on my return and there she would be at 8.00 a.m., wrapping a towel round her head and flicking the ends over one broad shoulder. It became one of the certainties of my life.
She must have been about 25 when I first saw her, which would have made her 40 towards the end, but the years were not unkind, though this might have been a tribute to the attention she lavished on her body. As someone said of Robespierre, he was busy every day of his life. And she was busy. That daily half-hour in the window was like landscape gardening to her, with her body the landscape. It couldn’t have been exhibitionism; she was too engrossed in what she was about. She was there at her most vulnerable, before the make-up went on, and make-up meant a lot to her. No astronaut prepared himself for space the way she did for the office.
When I saw her first it was a June morning and the sun was full on her; I thought it the most erotic sight I had ever seen and felt guilty. Anyone who has lived in London will have seen something like this once or twice, but she was there again the next day, and the next, so obsession replaced guilt. It got to the point where one morning, seeing her about to go out, I rushed outside and we collided in the street. She was very tall, not beautiful — her face had that bleached, expressionless look of some Scandinavian women. I said, ‘Sorry’ and she gave a tight little smile. We never met again.
The American filmmaker James Hill, producer of The Sweet Smell of Success , was staying with me at that time and the situation intrigued him. He saw it as a short film and kept dreaming up scripts, but each of these, in true Hollywood fashion, had a resolution. They required me to meet her. I wasn’t keen on this. I mean, what would my first words have been? ‘You won’t know me, but I feel I know you very well’? Slam. ‘I live opposite and every morning I see you in your window’? Smack. In the end Hill agreed. ‘Guess we’ll have to work on this one.’ But we never did.
Besides, the relationship had moved on. Familiarity buried the obsession and the morning came when I realised I was looking at that body with the lack of interest of an old, married man. Yet I was proud of it in a distant way, and it puzzled me that she should always be alone. Then that too changed, for one morning, ten years after I first saw her, there was a man there — a big, fat chap with a moustache. For the few months he was there I was sad, for I felt he was not good enough for her, my Diana in the Georgian window.
I got married about this time and when my wife stayed in the flat I told her about this lady. As if on cue, she appeared at that moment. My wife, whose eyesight is not good, leaned out, the curtains blowing behind her, and that was the only time the Lady of Shalott looked out. A blind I had never seen before was hastily pulled down, but the next week it was up again.
I don’t know when she left her flat. All I know is that a week ago I looked across and there was someone else there. A stocky brunette stood shamelessly in the window, naked as a penny piece. And I closed the curtains.
When a Young Man’s Dreams Expire
MOMENT OF SOCIAL HISTORY . It was Sunday morning, just after breakfast, in the junior common room of an Oxford college deserted except for two men, both middle-aged and moving with edgy stateliness, for this was the morning after the night before. They had stopped in front of a long metal box fixed at chest-level to the wall; there was no other form of ornament, so the box dominated not only the wall but the whole room.
‘Incredible,’ said one of them, a northern GP, shaking his head. ‘I mean, what sort of people are these, for God’s sake? Can you imagine going anywhere near that thing with everyone looking?’
I should add that this was once a man very active in that
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