Long weeks have passed since the first time we met.
She chose the time and the place. A cafe terrace overlooking the lake. It would be cold, she said, I should wrap up, but on a chill winter weekday there would be few people around, and we could speak freely. As now we should.
I arrived early. Of course I came early. I was never a morning person, but this was no ordinary day. Today I'd watched the sun come up from my balcony, sweat dampened sheets strewn on the floor, a long night passed in tossing and turning, anxious, doubtful, eager, determined, driven, fearful, hopeful, yearning ... till at last I rose from the tumult to sit in the cold morning air. If I smoked, I thought, this would be the right time to do it.
Now, hours later, I sat in the cafe, outside on the terrace. Best suit, best coat, woollen scarf, crisp new shirt bought for the occasion, ironed twice, shoes polished, hair cut and groomed. Looking down on the car park below, at the car I'd had cleaned inside and out for the occasion. Pointlessly, no doubt. Probably she would not even see it, far less set foot in it. It had just seemed appropriate.
She was late.
I tried not to look at my watch, to suppress the worm of anxiety as it grew with each passing tick. I tried instead to measure the time with sips of the coffee I'd ordered, my hand thrust deep in the pocket of my coat, as if hiding the watch would make time stand still.
No car pulled up in the car park.
Time crawled by in sips, till the cup was dry now, last drop drained. I pulled the watch from my pocket. Twenty five minutes. Twenty five to despair? Should I leave? I would not. I would sit there till nightfall, in vain hope no doubt, but I would wait all the same.
It was then that I heard the car door below. No car had pulled in, but a woman had stepped from a car that was parked there before. A well-dressed woman in a camel coat, with a scarf and a fur collar raised against the cold.
Looking up at the terrace, she raises a gloved hand and smiles.
All this time, she has been watching.
I stand, and raise my hand in return.
Through the glass panel behind me, I watch her enter the cafe. A waiter rushes to take her coat, but she waves him away with gracious good humour. With a smile she points to the terrace, and chatting gaily all the while, allows him to escort her to the corner table, where I stand, waiting, my heart thudding in my chest.
At the table now, she extends a hand. My first, fleeting impulse is to bow and to kiss it, but I know better than that. I extend mine and she shakes it firmly, a twinkle in her eye, as if somehow she's seen the thought that flashed through my mind.
Now she sits, fussing with the large leather bag she's carrying. She orders coffee from the waiter, and then with a shiver, summons him back.
"And a brandy, please. For the cold."
And then, looking at me:
"Perhaps my guest might like one too?"
He would. Not for the cold. To steady his nerves. I nod.
And already I've learned something. She is quick, observant and considerate with it.
While we wait for the order, she chats, chatters even, rapidly, fluently and inconsequentially about the lake and the weather, how she likes to walk in the woods, the traffic, the city, the cafe ... and I look on like a tongue-tied schoolboy, smiling when I can, nodding, but finding few words to interject.
She is an attractive woman, petite, not quite beautiful, but with an undefined, understated presence that draws me towards her. She is mature, clearly not in the first flush of youth, but wearing her years with grace and serenity, with laughter lines at the edge of her eyes she has made no attempt to disguise. She is discreetly but carefully made up, with faintly rouged cheeks and wide, dark, eyes that twinkle and flash under plucked, arched brows as she talks. Her hair is pulled back sharply from her face, and pinned in a knot, a hint of severity that contrasts with the jewellery she wears, and the soft fabrics I see under her coat.
At last the waiter arrives with the order.
As she smiles him away, her manner changes. By no means unfriendly, but now brisk and professional. She reaches in her bag, and removes a folder, a notebook, and a slim, silver pen. With a smile, she leans back in her chair.
"Thank you for coming. It's a pleasure to meet face to face at last."
"It is," I say, in eager agreement.
"We have a lot to discuss. Some, of course, we have discussed already, but I think it's important to hear each other's words, from our own lips. Don't you agree?"
She smiles, and I nod in agreement.
"Then let me begin. Please don't interrupt while I explain."
She sips from her brandy.
"As you can see, I am a mature woman. I will not tell you my age, but I will tell you I have lived the life you might expect me to have lived. It has been a conventional, orthodox, respectable middle class life. I have been married, divorced, widowed, a parent, a carer. I have enjoyed a career. With some success, I may add, although along the way I have had to take instruction from people less able than I."
She wrinkles her nose.
"Most of them men."
It's a joke. An icebreaker. I smile in agreement. She continues.
"Now, at last, I am free. Now this is MY time. I own a property I can do as I please in. I have an income that meets all my needs. I am beholden to no-one. I am a free and independent woman. And I intend to enjoy my freedom to the full. And in enjoying it, I am done with convention. I am done with orthodoxy, I am done with middle class respectability. I will do just as I please, live my life as I please, explore as I please, experience what I please, give free rein to all of my instincts and impulses, desires and pleasures, let light into the corners of my mind that have been dark until now."
She pauses. I am tempted to blurt admiration, but I do not interrupt.
She continues.
"And for this I am seeking a man who will join me. There is no one word to describe this man. None that I know that convey all I want. But I will explain. I want a man who will surrender himself to me, without reserve and without qualification. He will obey me, in all of my pleasures, or he will be punished. I will lay down rules for his behaviour, which I will enforce. But despite all this, he will not be a slave. He will kneel at my feet every day because I am his light and that is the place that he chooses."
She has me fixed in her gaze now, unblinking. She sips from her glass and continues.
"This man will be, in some ways, my servant. He will cook and clean, drive and shop, deliver me from the tiresome mundanities of daily life. But he will be cherished in a way that servants are not."
