Could anyone be that beautiful?
I was driving round the Aldwych on my way to work when I first saw her. She was walking up the steps of the Aldwych Theatre. If I’d stared a moment longer I would have driven into the back of the car in front of me, but before I could confirm my fleeting impression she had disappeared into the throng of theatregoers.
I spotted a parking space on my left-hand side and swung into it at the last possible moment, without indicating, causing the vehicle behind me to let out several appreciative blasts. I leapt out of my car and ran back towards the theatre, realising how unlikely it was that I’d be able to find her in such a melee, and that even if I did, she was probably meeting a boyfriend or husband who would turn out to be about six feet tall and closely to resemble Harrison Ford.
Once I reached the foyer I scanned the chattering crowd. I slowly turned 360 degrees, but could see no sign of her. Should I try to buy a ticket? I wondered. But she could be seated anywhere — the stalls, the dress circle, even the upper circle. Perhaps I should walk up and down the aisles until I spotted her. But I realised I wouldn’t be allowed into any part of the theatre unless I could produce a ticket.
And then I saw her. She was standing in a queue in front of the window marked “Tonight’s Performance”, and was just one away from being attended to. There were two other customers, a young woman and a middle- aged man, waiting in line behind her. I quickly joined the queue, by which time she had reached the front. I leant forward and tried to overhear what she was saying, but I could only catch the box office manager’s reply: “Not much chance with the curtain going up in a few minutes’ time, madam,” he was saying. “But if you leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.” She thanked him and walked off in the direction of the stalls.
My first impression was confirmed. It didn’t matter if you looked from the ankles up or from the head down — she was perfection. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and I noticed that she was having exactly the same effect on several other men in the foyer. I wanted to tell them all not to bother. Didn’t they realise she was with me? Or rather, that she would be by the end of the evening.
After she had disappeared from view, I craned my neck to look into the booth. Her ticket had been placed to one side. I sighed with relief as the young woman two places ahead of me presented her credit card and picked up four tickets for the dress circle.
I began to pray that the man in front of me wasn’t looking for a single.
“Do you have one ticket for tonight’s performance?” he asked hopefully, as the three-minute bell sounded. The man in the booth smiled.
I scowled. Should I knife him in the back, kick him in the groin, or simply scream abuse at him?
“Where would you prefer to sit, sir? The dress circle or the stalls?”
“Don’t say stalls,” I willed. “Say Circle… Circle… Circle…”
“Stalls,” he said.
“I have one on the aisle in row H,” said the man in the box, checking the computer screen in front of him. I uttered a silent cheer as I realised that the theatre would be trying to sell off its remaining tickets before it bothered with returns handed in by members of the public. But then, I thought, how would I get around that problem?
By the time the man in front of me had bought the ticket on the end of row H, I had my lines well rehearsed, and just hoped I wouldn’t need a prompt.
“Thank goodness. I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” I began, trying to sound out of breath. The man in the ticket booth looked up at me, but didn’t seem all that impressed by my opening line.
“It was the traffic. And then I couldn’t find a parking space. My girlfriend may have given up on me. Did she by any chance hand in my ticket for resale?”
He looked unconvinced. My dialogue obviously wasn’t gripping him. “Can you describe her?” he asked suspiciously.
“Short-cropped dark hair, hazel eyes, wearing a red silk dress that…”
“Ah, yes. I remember her,” he said, almost sighing. He picked up the ticket by his side and handed it to me.
“Thank you,” I said, trying not to show my relief that he had come in so neatly on cue with the closing line from my first scene. As I hurried off in the direction of the stalls, I grabbed an envelope from a pile on the ledge beside the booth.
I checked the price of the ticket: twenty pounds. I extracted two ten-pound notes from my wallet, put them in the envelope, licked the flap and stuck it down.
The girl at the entrance to the stalls checked my ticket. “F-11. Six rows from the front, on the right-hand side.”
I walked slowly down the aisle until I spotted her. She was sitting next to an empty place in the middle of the row. As I made my way over the feet of those who were already seated, she turned and smiled, obviously pleased to see that someone had purchased her spare ticket.
I returned the smile, handed over the envelope containing my twenty pounds, and sat down beside her. “The man in the box office asked me to give you this.”
“Thank you.”
She slipped the envelope into her evening bag. I was about to try the first line of my second scene on her, when the house lights faded and the curtain rose for Act One of the real performance. I suddenly realised that I had no idea what play I was about to see. I glanced across at the programme on her lap and read the words “An Inspector Calls, by J. B. Priestley”.
I remembered that the critics had been full of praise for the production when it had originally opened at the National Theatre, and had particularly singled out the performance of Kenneth Cranham. I tried to concentrate on what was taking place on stage.
The eponymous inspector was staring into a house in which an Edwardian family were preparing for a dinner to celebrate their daughter’s engagement. “I was thinking of getting a new car,” the father was saying to his prospective son-in-law as he puffed away on his cigar.
At the mention of the word “car”, I suddenly remembered that I had abandoned mine outside the theatre. Was it on a double yellow line? Or worse? To hell with it. They could have it in part-exchange for the model sitting next to me. The audience laughed, so I joined in, if only to give the impression that I was following the plot. But what about my original plans for the evening? By now everyone would be wondering why I hadn’t turned up. I realised that I wouldn’t be able to leave the theatre during the interval, either to check on my car or to make a phone call to explain my absence, as that would be my one chance of developing my own plot.
The play had the rest of the audience enthralled, but I had already begun rehearsing the lines from my own script, which would have to be performed during the interval between Acts One and Two. I was painfully aware that I would be restricted to fifteen minutes, and that there would be no second night.
By the time the curtain came down at the end of the first act, I was confident of my draft text. I waited for the applause to die down before I turned towards her.
“What an original production,” I began. “Quite modernistic.” I vaguely remembered that one of the critics had followed that line. “I was lucky to get a seat at the last moment.”
“I was just as lucky,” she replied. I felt encouraged. “I mean, to find someone who was looking for a single ticket at such short notice.”
I nodded. “My name’s Michael Whitaker.”
“Anna Townsend,” she said, giving me a warm smile.
“Would you like a drink?” I asked.
“Thank you,” she replied, “that would be nice.”
I stood up and led her through the packed scrum that was heading towards the stalls bar, occasionally glancing back to make sure she was still following me. I was somehow expecting her no longer to be there, but each time I turned to look she greeted me with the same radiant smile.
“What would you like?” I asked, once I could make out the bar through the crowd.
“A dry martini, please.”
“Stay here, and I’ll be back in a moment,” I promised, wondering just how many precious minutes would be wasted while I had to wait at the bar. I took out a five-pound note and held it up conspicuously, in the hope that the prospect of a large tip might influence the barman’s sense of direction. He spotted the money, but I still had to wait
