but into fear. Fear that this extraordinary woman might glance around and reveal her features to be in some way less exquisite than the picture I had involuntarily allowed myself to imagine. Or fear – far worse – that she might glance around and reveal herself to be every bit as beautiful as I had envisioned. Then how was I to cope? With Venus camped in my communal garden, what chance work, what chance sleep, what chance me doing any wonted thing at all?
A lunatic’s vigil ensued: I couldn’t leave the window; I was bound fast to my vantage point and to my fate. No escape and no reprieve. I just had to kneel there, knuckle-whitened, and wait. Each move she made was another moment of acute crisis; another moment at which reality and imagination might be rent asunder and sent howling and crippled into their separate wildernesses of despair. In anguish, I watched her fold her arms in front and rest her chin upon them, thinking that now must come the final reckoning. In agony, I watched her hand reach back over her opposite shoulder to pull up the strap of her dress where it had fallen down her arm, convinced that she would have to turn. In awe, I watched her raise her head to follow a passing butterfly, certain that the gesture would disturb the geometry of her relaxation and cause her whole body to stir and show to me my destiny. Until, at last, in no time and with no ceremony or thought for her attendant disciple, she simply turned over on to her back.
And I nearly fell from the window.
What can I say? That she was extraordinarily beautiful. It will hardly do. That she looked like the sort of woman whom men do not dare to dream of? That her brow was delectable, her nose delightful, her mouth delicious? That she had the features of an angel? That hers was a face to melt both Poles at once, to drag the dead from their tombs, to launch a thousand ships? None of this would quite capture it, I’m afraid. Then, as now, none of this would come close.
Ladies and gentlemen: she was a real hottie.
If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,
By sun, or moon, thou darkenest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.
I saw her face for only a second or two before she lifted her sandals, took up the map and held it aloft so as to read while simultaneously shading herself from the sun. Then, like a taut rope sliced, I fell back into my studio and recoiled upon my stool. After a moment, I laid down my quill with care and due reverence and eased my way out from behind my board. And after that, as I say, I fell apart …
I shot out of the studio, stopping only to pick up the keys from my dining table (and not daring to look out of the window again), and set off at spectacular velocity down my (bastard, bastard) stairs before hurling myself along the pavement towards Roy’s. I tornadoed through his door and came twisting and harrying up to the counter.
‘Roy, I … I need the best oranges you have got. Right now. And a single lime – about a dozen – oranges, I mean – and I haven’t got time for you to weigh them so I’ll just take them on a guesstimate and pay you tomorrow, or later, or whenever, and you can do the usual five per cent compound interest rate payable anew at the stroke of midnight, every midnight, or whatever it was we agreed before.’
‘Whooaah. Steady Mr Jackson. Steady. Deep breaths. No need to panic. No need to get all carried away with compound interest.’
‘Roy – where are the bloody oranges?’
‘Same as always Mr Jackson – on the fruit stand outside. You passed them on the way in. Everybody does.’
I exited the shop and began feverishly to gather the better oranges.
Roy filled the doorway. ‘Having another one of our little lady-related emergencies, are we, Mr Jackson? Bit early in the week for that sort of thing isn’t it … Fond of oranges, is she?’
‘Roy, seriously: is it OK if I just take these? I really can’t hang around right now.’
‘Be my guest. A pleasure to see them going so fast.’ He chuckled.
‘Thanks. And I’ve got a couple of limes.’
‘I’ll make a note.’
Back up the road I hurtled, and across, and (fumbling for my keys at the big black front door) up, up, up I raced, back up the stairs and through my door, and up some more, and into the hall and straight to the kitchenette where I washed my hands and hastily, frantically, began slicing, squeezing, pouring until the job was done, lime and all, into a jug and into the freezer.
Off came my clothes, my work tunic over my head, my jeans shaken leg from leg as I tore into the bedroom. I threw myself into the shower. I scalded and froze and scalded and froze my shocked and flinching body. I leapt out. I towelled myself raw. I fetched out my trusty shorts, plunged into the arms of my freshly laundered, parchment-white, short-sleeved shirt and dashed back into the hall.
Freshly squeezed orange juice with just a little lime – the ideal refreshment and a pithy passport into my lady’s afternoon.
One more check. I sprinted back to the studio window.
She had gone!
Oh fuck!
No. Wait!
She had only moved. She had only moved! Now she was lying across the bench almost directly beneath me. My God. But for how much longer? I eyed the treacherous sky. A grey-hulled taskforce of destroyer clouds was moving in from the west.
This time I took the stairs like an Olympic pommel-horse specialist, vaulting around the banisters with a mighty swing at each turn, rucksack pressed against my shoulder. I banged out of the front door and – sandals slapping like demented seal flippers on the twelve stone stairs down to Bristol Gardens – set off, left, towards the entrance to the communal garden.
Which was locked.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Must the human condition be forever frustration and inarticulate wrath at the sheer injustice of it all?
For a long minute I stood, stalled on Formosa Street like a bewildered and long-travelled tourist blinking in the summer sun outside the Uffizi gallery – ‘Closed until next year for essential restoration work.’ Vast, white, twelve foot high, the unscalable double gate mocked me, the light glaring in the bright white gloss. There was nothing else for it. I would have to go all the way round to the other entrance at the opposite end of the garden. I turned the corner back the way I had come and rushed up the hill.
And so into paradise at last I came, outwardly serene, but with a heart now beating itself blue against the cage of my ribs. Along the path, through the trees, into the open, across the grass, between the chestnut boughs, just a little further, and there she was. There she was: Venus on a bench with pillow.
At fifty paces, I deliberately scrunched on the gravel path. She glanced up in my direction. I stepped on to the grass and crossed towards the middle of the lawn between us. A black cat licked a white paw.
Fresh fucking orange juice!
What oh what oh what was I thinking? What kind of an idiot brought a woman he did not know – had not met, had only seen, had only seen from a distance – unsolicited orange juice? What in the name of arse was I doing? There she was: an innocent woman, minding her own business, quietly happy, undesiring of any man’s attention, trying to read, trying to enjoy the sunshine, trying to live her life. And here was I … What had got into me? For God’s sake man, turn it around for a single moment and ask yourself what you would think if your afternoon was hijacked by some terrible penis appearing (as if from the most casual of nowheres) with a picnic flask of freshly squeezed orange juice and two – two – glasses in his rucksack? Come on Jackson: only imagine her later relating the episode to her friends – their faces practically maimed with uncontrollable laughter – imagine her telling the story of this hapless, hapless scrotum of a man. Orange juice. Could anything be worse? Could anything be less natural?
Disgusted and horribly afraid, my faculties were fleeing the scene like so many deserting