...smile in passing and she returned it. When came down again twenty minutes later, she sat there still, patiently, in the same position.

She said, "I'm waiting for the man with the key to my flat."

Instead of the previous tenant's heavy metal, the muted rhythms of the Beatles now trickled up from below. Linda had moved in.

I'd like to be under the sea In an octopus's garden with you ...

For me, it was love at first sight. It was as if I had waited all of my twenty-five years to find her. At the same time, I felt guilty. Janine, in Sydney, had applied for a teaching post in London and was preparing to join me. A letter had arrived from her that morning. She had enclosed the latest snapshot of herself: tall, willowy, with cool grey eyes. My transfer had separated us. Janine, always so rational, had urged me to accept. "It's an opportunity you can't afford to turn down."

I didn't give in at once to the attraction. At first, loyalty to Janine prevailed. Linda and I passed occasionally in the hall, acknowledging each other with the casual nods of fellow tenants. At last, I tapped on her door with the excuse: "Do you have any change for the meter? I've run out."

"Come in."

Why did she move me so? It was something in her eyes, her face. She later said, "People tell me I have the pout of a spoiled child," but I saw an appealing vulnerability.

"Are you a writer?"

"A journalist."

"I can hear your typewriter."

"I hope it doesn't bother you."

"Oh, no. You're really very quiet. In the last place, I had a couple next door who fought all the time."

I became aware of her hands, slim with tapering fingers. Around her were her few possessions, a cheap stereo, an old brown dressing gown hung on the door. On top of the wardrobe was a single scuffed suitcase. A paperback edition of Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point was open, face down, on her pillow. She later gave it to me and I have it still.

She made coffee and we talked, the hesitant words of two strangers who are attracted to each other. She was in her early twenties and worked for a travel agent. She was of Irish-Italian ancestry. She combined the beauty of the Celt and of the Latin: the blue eyes in that white unblemished face flamed by the straight black hair.

Back in my flat upstairs, I was torn. There was Janine in Australia who had applied for a teaching post in London.

Britain, in that summer of 1972, was in the grip of strikes: a coal strike, a dockers' strike, a rail strike. I was rotated to the morning shift, my first job of the day to go through the British dailies and put anything of likely interest to Australia on the wire to Sydney. "Pubs and beer," said Maddox, our bustling little chief editor, "use all the stories on pubs and beer."

It was a week before I again knocked on Linda's door. This time, I made no excuses.

"May I come in?"

Again I sensed that forlornness that drew me to her. Fragments of what we said to each other come back to me. She mentioned a boyfriend; he was French and a Virgo, she was a Taurus. "We're both earth signs." The upward turn of her eyes indicated all was not well between them, but his existence caused me a twinge of pain.

"What is your star sign?" she asked.

"I'm a Piscean."

"We Taureans are supposed to be steady and down to earth."

"We Pisceans are supposed to be romantic and sensitive."

"Do Pisces and Taurus get along?"

"Water and earth," I joked. "Fertility, growth."

"Do you play cards?"

We played cards, sevens or rummy, children's games. That Sunday, we walked in Kensington Gardens, We took a train from London Bridge Station to Banstead and explored the countryside, wandering under the plane trees populated by fat grey squirrels.

"I'm a city girl. But I just love the country."

We passed a stately country house set in its landscaped garden. I slipped my arm into hers.

"I could bear to live here," I said....

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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The devil and the deep blue sea.(Editorial), December 01, 2004

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