Woman not yet found (Faintheart at a tube station)

Every time I pass by Holborn tube station I recall a (non-)incident from nearly 8 years ago. I was living in Notting Hill, and working just off High Holborn, and so took the Central Line each day. One morning I was stood next to a very cute young lady in the crowded carraige. She was stylish, quite quirky, and therefore astonishingly alluring. I tried hard to maintain the glassy composure of the commuter, focusing on a spot just past her cute ear as I spun my hopeless dreams the whole journey through.

We both got off at Holborn, and she spoke to me. This is unheard of both in London commuter etiquette, and doubly so in my experience of cute strangers. But she was an Australian, so can be forgiven such outrages. She usually took another tube line, which was down that day, and so didn't know how to get from Holborn to her work at Somerset House (the Tax Office, then). Did I know the way? There were two ways she could have got there. The first was to go down Kingsway to Aldwych, turn right onto the Strand and then cross over to Waterloo Bridge; the second was to go down Kingsway to Aldwych, turn right onto the Strand and then cross over to Waterloo Bridge, but with me walking with her to show her the way, as it’s really quite tricky, and it was a Friday, so being a little late wouldn’t hurt, especially if I got to find out more about the charming, and very cute green eyed, red (dyed) haired young lady who also lived in Notting Hill (now, there's a thing), and was on a sabbatical to the Inland Revenue. But, of course, I gave her the WRONG directions. Ie. The first version.

The second version didn’t occur to me until after she had thanked me, given me, I swear, a rather quizzical look, and set off alone down Kingsway. That look still haunts me, and is conjured up whenever I pass Holborn Tube Station. I sometimes glance to see if she is still standing there, with that look, so she can say: what took you, it’s only been 8 years? Her name I didn’t get. Can I confess, I googled Somerset + House + Australian + Sabbatical + accountant, in various combinations? I even considered phoning, if I could think up a plausible lie for needing to talk to a girl, who I could only describe as ‘cute’, with ‘lovely green eyes’. I even hung around Somerset House once or twice in my lunch hours that summer, but to no avail. She was gone.

I think I knew Thomas Hardy’s poem, ‘Faintheart in a Railway Train’ (1922) then; but

it came to me fittingly late.

At nine in the morning there passed a church,

At ten there passed me by the sea,

At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,

At two a forest of oak and birch,

And then, on a platform, she:

A radiant stranger, who saw not me.

I queried, "Get out to her do I dare?"

But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,

And the wheels moved on.

O could it but be

That I had alighted there!

Yes, Thomas. You, me and no doubt countless others before and since. The Divine Comedy's 'Commuter Love' answers the plea from 1998.

Freezing Monday morning

She is waiting for her train to come

I brush past her, smell her perfume

Watch her hair move as she turns to go

She doesn't know I exist

I'm gonna keep it like this

I'm not gonna take any risks this time.

'This time', the most resonant phrase in the song, bespeaking painful experience. Between these two literary non-events are the innumerable brave hearted fools, who have rushed in, taken those ‘risks', and been rewarded with what they prayed for. Instead, I had my adventure, and like Hardy and Hannon, still have those dreams . Better to replay that green-eyed quizzical look, than the look of contempt she would no doubt have thrown me frequently later when life had intervened and frayed the fragile twine of my dream-spun desire*.

*It is an old story. As old as love itself. Petrarch, one of the inventors of poetic love, saw his beloved Laura on the steps of a church in Avignon on Good Friday, 1327. And that was it, she was married, he was smitten, and simply wrote her a lot of sonnets. Told Laura he loved her, and in so doing perfected the sonnet form. He never bedded or wedded her, but he was devastated by one look, and the love lyric would never be the same again.