I can’t stop thinking about a woman I met in September

I met her for a few hours. She made an impression

The queen had died a few hours before. We, the guests of a powerful man we didn’t know, stood sombrely at the top of The Century staring grimly at our half drunk glasses. I was, quite by accident, in an appropriate black dress, but my youth stuck out uncomfortably in a sea of wiser faces. The host came up to me, bemused. “I’m so sorry,” he said, politely. “Do I know you?”

I’d rehearsed what to say, but the words were lost on me. “No.” I said, my voice sounding childish and shrill. “But I was invited.” He nodded, politely, already having lost interest. I was far too young to be here. Twenty years too young. I resolved to drink and bear the loneliness of the evening. At the bar, I watched them. I’ve always enjoyed people watching. The wealthy tangled with their lean, mature blondes. I was neither. There was one woman who stood out, wide blue eyes the colour of the seas on Mondello, easily the most beautiful woman there. Her grey hair was pulled up in a chignon, her slim body wrapped in heavily patterned fabric. To my astonishment, she grinned at me. “I love your dress,” she said stroking my arm. There was a static to her, an electricity that bit into me. I knew that face. I knew that voice. “You’re an actress, aren’t you?” she continued. “I am. Well, it’s harder at my age.”

“I doubt it,” I replied. “You’re so beautiful.” I wish I’d used another word, something more meaningful, but she was. Unbearably beautiful. The symmetry and elegance of her face was almost hellenic. She grinned, again. Perfectly white, straight teeth. “You’re just saying that because you know who my husband is.” I didn’t. But I didn’t want to be rude. She sensed this, and pointed out a man sat like Cronus in a corner in the dark. I didn’t recognise him. “Is he rich?” I joked. She flung her head back and laughed.

“You really don’t know?” She asked. I shook my head, peering at him closely. She squeezed my hand. “He’s rather famous.” I drank my negroni, hoping I would find the right thing to say at the bottom of my glass. “I’m afraid not,” I replied. “But I think I know who you are.”

Her brilliant blue eyes swam against mine. I wasn’t attracted to her, but I loved her. This woman saw me, somehow. Understood me. In a few short words. “Who am I?”

“You’re an actress. A wonderful actress. You were in a lot of things in the eighties.” Ethanol had slurred my wit and words and made them ordinary. Quotidian. Stupid. She beamed at me, the neon light on her face filling the shadows in a deep blue.

“You’ve seen me?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She looked a little sad now. “Not many people do. I exist through him, somehow.” Cronus blinked at me across the room. There is a point in aging where girls of my kind became acidic. An annoyance. I never drank, and I was almost drunk now. Drunk before a woman who fascinated me. Her kindness fascinated me. She burnt with kindness.

“I don’t think you do,” I said. “I think everyone in this room turns and asks themselves, who is she? Not who is she with, surely?”

“And yet,” she replied, “you are alone. And so young.”

“I’m not sleeping with him,” I said a little too bluntly, pointing at the host. “Or anyone else.”

“Of course not.” Her eyes were spectacularly blue.

“It’s not always good. Being young, I mean. People treat you like a prop. Something to be looked at. Assumed stupid until proven innocent.” She clasped her hand over mine at this, looking at me intensely.

“Oh you must enjoy it,” she whispered, as if it was some great secret. “Because one day, it’ll be gone. And the parts will be gone. And men won’t look at you, or want you. You’ll be invisible.”

I wish I’d told her then, in that moment, how luminous she was. How every man, even those with thirty-something models on their arms, turned to see this great ancient beauty with awe in their eyes. How she was anything but invisible. That she ached with an intelligence and warmth I’d never felt before. The intensity of her was that of divine femininity. But I didn’t.

I never saw her again. I wish I’d asked for her number, spoken a little longer, said goodbye a little more meaningfully when Cronus became tired. But I didn’t. And I will always remember those strange few moments I spent with a woman who wasn’t aware of her own extraordinary power.