Now, as she writes of that day nearly three years later she sees how she was power less to fight.....There was nothing she could to stop herself . She knew - oh, how she knew! - the pain of loving a man who had another woman on the edges of his life. The one who had last broken her heart had betrayed her over another woman. He had insisted this person meant little to him, that he no longer saw her that way, but she discoverd his lies and vowed never again to grow close to a man in any situation like this. Yet now, in the face of feeling so enchanted, of feeling this way, she felt herself falling, melting... would it really be such a risk?.... maybe this time would be different...Following their long lunch, they went on to the Savoy for a champagne tea, where a pianist was playing and some people danced. She told him how she would love to learn how to dance properly, and they talked of his own dancing days - he was a good dancer, he said, and would love to teach her. Then he left the table and had a quiet word in the pianist's ear.Soon after, the melody of La Vie en Rose began. He placed an arm behind her, and they looked at one another without speaking for some time. He told her she was beautiful, and that he could not believe how easy he felt in her company, that when they had first spoken on the train it was as if he had always known her, that he had never before been so at ease, so quickly, with someone he had never met. He told her how La Vie en Rose was a song his wife had loved, and he would often ask it to be played for her. Perhaps they both knew, there and then... he had watched her intently as he held her, the song playing...looking back many times afterwards, she always remembered that moment as if she was in a film, like a dream, was it really her? Was it possible to feel this way?
It amused them to find themselves so attracted to one another despite differences that could, to some, suggest no common ground. He a Tory, she a socialist. He, then aged 77, she 46. He was of prosperous background, a waste paper merchant, his father had been a docker and he was a 'self-made man' who was very comfortably off and had lived the type of lifestyle she had never encountered. His children had attended public schools. She grew up in a council house, her father a factory worker. She had experienced a somewhat wild youth, had lived a more progressive lifestyle, moved in wider social circles encountering those on society's margins. In many ways, for all his international and business experience, in human relationships he was quite naive, but this added excitement and interest, fed their curiosity towards one another, to each of them the other was quite unlike anyone they had known before.
Yet although being drawn from opposing directions, in coming together so much was shared - both excited by language, having a love of English and the use of words, literature, poetry, nature and wild country, current affairs and politics, the arts, walking - oh, they both had a deep love of walking in the countryside. Then their shared enthusiasm for claret, for malt whisky...and that indefinable something - that way of understanding the world and experiencing it, that each sensed about the other, because each of them knew just how it felt. To her he was the most romantic man, a passionate man whose upbringing and culture had stifled this part of him, but who was now finding a freedom with her to live that part of himself that had been kept hidden all these years. To him, she was the most exciting and passionate woman he had known. Being together gave them each a freedom they could not bear to lose.
As the weeks went by they would meet whenever he was able to be away for several hours. They grew closer and closer, their relationship was physical almost from the start, because it seemed the most natural thing in the world to be intimate in every way, like two magnets just having to touch - to touch with minds, emotions, bodies, souls - and hearts. Not two months had passed before they professed how they were in love.
