ANOTHER BRIEF ENCOUNTER

 

It was so wonderful meeting her after so long. The years rolled back in an instant. I was transported back to the time before. I felt attraction and affection and warmth but she felt more. She hasn't told her husband she was meeting me and told me she hasn't been able to think all day, just watching the hands on the clock work their way slowly around.

 

She has married safe. Someone with whom she could never enjoy the sensual pleasures of soft pungent cheese and heady dessert wine. Someone who will never hold her hands across the table in a crowded restaurant and stroke her forearms, who will never lift her fingers to his mouth and kiss each tip with everyone else watching, as I am doing now as she colours and adjusts herself on the seat. 

I kiss her on the mouth and on the street as we walk toward the station and I have overstepped the mark. "This has got to stop. It's too much. Don't you know no-one has kissed me or done any of this since I've been married" and I am chided. I apologise. "You can't do that, or at least give me ten minutes so I can be ready for it". 

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But now we are on the station platform and there are minutes before her train and she is holding me and kisses my face and I kiss her again and she pulls me close before stepping on board. While we wait for the doors to close we blow kisses and she mouths "I love you" and wipes away tears.

 

And back in the 1945, in black and white, a steam whistle blows and the steam billows around the train. Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson look wistfully at each other over a cup of tea at Milford station.

 

A text on her way back. She has to see me again. There's so much catching up to do, so much to say. I say I'd love to but warn her it's dangerous and destabilizing but of course she can't hear and is planning for Sunday.