It's difficult, I've always found, to decide whether you should think of some of your experiences with despair or exultation. Exultation as you look back filled with exhilaration that such things could or did take place or despair that, having happened, nothing so wonderful could ever happen again. The third way, to just get on with things with a mild smile or a groan is not my way. I'm on a roller coaster and that's how I like to lead my life.
So that of course is how I feel about something that happened to me just over two months ago now at work. I work as a lawyer for a big firm in London, dealing with intellectual property - in particular copyright for technical manuals, textbooks and so forth. It sounds dry but can be a fascinating area with lots of money in dispute.
We had been instructed by an author of a specialist manual who was in dispute with his publisher. Our client was suggesting his publishers had used his methodology and structure, without his permission, in a totally separate manual on a different subject. Like most legal disputes it was both simple and complex, fascinating and dull all at the same time.
After some protracted correspondence, with barrages of letters fired both ways, we hunkered down for a meeting. Two lawyers arrived at our offices to represent the publishers and a colleague and I conducted a meeting with them on behalf of the author.
After a few pleasantries it was down to business. Despite their professional demeanour they refused to give at all and effectively started drawing lines in the sand on at least three issues. Naturally I was able to take stock of our opponents. The older was a well-known, overweight, fairly flamboyant solicitor well known in the City, gently percolating with perspiration in his bright blue stripy shirt and orange tie despite our air conditioning. Beside him, his colleague, though less colourfully attired, was equally striking though for very different reasons.
I tried to take her in with only a few glances as my attention was generally more focussed on her senior. A woman in her late twenties, I guessed, with dark almost black hair that framed her face and fell away to suggest a long journey into mystery. Her eyes told me of youth and sadness, of hope and the cold of loneliness. Clear, easy features with a subtle nose and lips whose sardonic smile was, I hoped, purely professional. Her face and her expressions were of someone both at peace yet pleased to be in thought and I was caught in between her two modes.
She wore a black, sleeveless one piece and I found myself again loving the grace and form of an attractive woman. Admiration for the natural perfection of her shoulders, her arms, her neck washed over me and I smiled mildly and happily in return almost before I realised it. My dreams encompassed all of this beauty and all the rest that I could not see. It was an instant but that was all I needed. To a man such as me, who finds his completion in the beauty of a woman, she was a gift. I did not need more as these looks had given me inspiration enough.
She looked down at her legal pad and I realised I had of course given myself away. But the negotiations were concluding anyway and I would treat her with the utmost politeness, never see her again and she would forget me as just one of any number of admirers. I was only sad that I could not make her understand what she had given me just in those looks.
It was done, they were gone, and I closed my book. The days came and went and my life breathed on. A week or so later the phone rang. It was my boss, saying there were some final points to be sorted out. Some subsidiary issues that had to be resolved - nothing crucial but important all the same. They wanted to send their second lawyer on the case to our offices that afternoon to discuss it all in person with me and finally sort it out. All very friendly.
I put the phone down and started breathing again.
When she arrived I ushered her into one of our smaller conference rooms with a low ceiling and a long table. She was dressed in a smart blue jacket with matching skirt and white blouse. As she walked in, I drank her in visually and was finally able too glimpse her thighs, especially thanks to the discrete slit in the side of her skirt.