How do you spend a day when you are waiting impatiently for the evening? When you cannot forget the night before? The only way to do it is to find something completely absorbing and let it take over for as long as you can. Normally work achieves it, but in my case I needed somewhere to go. So I turned to the Romans: I took the suburban railway out to the ruins of Aquincum, the ancient Roman capital of Pannonia, as the Romans called Hungary. It's like Pompeii, though not quite on the same scale. But here are the traces of shops and streets and a rather magnificent arena. I paid to join a guided tour of the Hercules Villa and I wandered through the high-walled baths. Roman sites have a way of taking me back to ancient times: there's always something about the Romans that gets the blood racing. I managed to put Frijda out of my mind for the morning, and I got lunch at a small cafe near the ruins. But after lunch I knew I wanted to head back into the city.
I strolled down Andrassy Avenue, looking in at the very chic and expensive shops, wondering as I always do who can afford the prices and why they should choose to. I headed to the river and stood for a while at the Shoes on the Danube memorial, a poignant collection of shoes sculpted in metal, a reminder of the tragic fate of Budapest's Jewish population during the Holocaust. So I was in reflective mood as I strolled back towards the cafe. I stopped at a stall along the way and bought a bunch of flowers and I got there with a good hour to spare. I sat at the same table as before and found the volume of Maupassant stories. A woman came over to the table, blonde hair and a black blouse with jeans and an apron: presumably Frijda's schoolfriend. I nearly ordered tea, but something told me it wouldn't do, so I asked for the same coffee I had had last time. She seemed to understand. I picked up the book and allowed the time to pass.
You can do that for a while, but once you pass the half past mark you start looking at your watch every couple of minutes or so. I kept looking up from the book towards the door. A few people came in, ordered coffees and sandwiches and Frijda's friend was always coming and going from the counter. Quarter to six: no sign of Frijda. Ten to: no sign, and I began to worry - had I remembered the instructions correctly? I took out her note - of course I had it on me - and checked. Yes, six o'clock. Seven minutes to. Five minutes to. Did she mean six? Or about six? Or half past six?
"Don't worry; she will come."
Surprised, I looked up. It was Frijda's friend, the cafe owner.
"Yes", I said. "I know."
"I am Kristina."
"John."
We shook hands.
"You know, you are very lucky," she said. "Frijda is a good friend."
"You've known her some time?"
"We were at school together. But that's not what I mean. I mean she is a good friend to whoever is her friend. Very loyal, very loving."
"That's good to hear. And am I -?"
"Oh yes", she said. "You are definitely her friend."
I was about to say something about how we had only known each other a couple of days, but Kristina held up her hand to stop me.
"She's here. I told you."
And she came in.
She was in a very smart light grey business suit with a beautifully cut white blouse. It was unbuttoned to reveal a bit of cleavage and I realised that her suit included a waistcoat - is there anything more sexy than a waistcoat on a beautiful woman? She came straight over to me and kissed me on the cheek, then she turned and said something to Kristina and sat down opposite me.
"So," she said, "what have you done today? I want to hear all about it."
"First things first," I said, handing her the flowers. She was delighted. She smelt them and admired them and kissed me again, and then she demanded to know about my day.
So I told her. I told her about the Roman ruins and immediately she started to quiz me. She wanted to know about the Romans, what they were doing in Hungary, what happened to them when they were here - I had to drag a lot of information back from the far reaches of my memory of schooldays. She seemed to love hearing it, though, and when I said I hoped I wasn't boring her, she let out a little cry.
"Oh, John, you cannot know how much I love hearing this. All day long I have to deal with stupid people wanting stupid things - I have forgotten this world exists. This world of knowledge and ideas and history - and - Maupassant ..."
I touched her hand.
"Frijda, darling," I said, "all that is still there if you look for it."
"You have to make time for it," she said. "That's the problem. I have so little time. But now I have you. Tell me about it, John. Tell me all about it."
And so we talked as we finished the coffees, said goodbye to Kristina and strolled through the streets. Frijda asked me endless questions: "What happened when the Romans left?" "What did I know about the Turks?" "Poor Maria Theresa - why would they not allow her to be Empress?" and so on. It was as if the questions that had been in her head for years were suddenly all coming out at once. I answered as best as could, though my own knowledge was patchy, and suddenly we were at her car.
"We'll pick up your bag at the hotel and then the evening is mine," she said, as we climbed in and she drove off.
(Note to self: Add "Hungarians" alongside "the French" and "Italians" in your list of Craziest Drivers in the World.)
We collected my bags from the hotel and then she drove us to an area outside the centre, with old, nineteenth century residence buildings and stepped streets - it reminded me a bit of Montmartre.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"You'll see."
She took me past small shops open at the front, selling fruit and vegetables, and past the inevitable cafes and bars, to an ordinary doorway, no different from any others except for a small neon sign above it and, as we drew nearer, the sound of lively dixieland jazz. She led me inside and down a staircase and suddenly, like some American speakeasy from the twenties, it opened out into a nightclub. It was dimly lit, with small tables with lamps on them, and there was a small stage where the band sat in front of an equally small dance floor where a couple were dancing: they danced very well and obviously came regularly. Frijda sat down and immediately a waiter came over. She ordered two glasses of sparkling wine and we sat down to watch the show. It was a singer, rather good, with a Marlene Dietrich-style voice and a sternly sexy look to go with it. She sang a couple of romantic songs and then the band struck up another lively number. Frijda leapt to her feet.
"Come and dance."
"You don't want to dance with me. I'm a hopeless dancer."
"It doesn't matter. Come and dance."
So we did. And she was right - it didn't matter. I tried to follow her pattern of moves, and if it went wrong, which it quite often did, we just laughed. Some other couples joined us, and when the number ended we clapped and stayed on the floor for the next dance. And the next. And the one after that. And then the band played a slow tune. We could have resumed our seats, left the slow dance to lovers, but we didn't. We stayed on the dance floor and I took Frijda in my arms. And we let the music do the rest.
We danced slowly, holding each other tightly, swaying slightly to the rhythm, deliberately, sensuously. And at the end of the number, Frijda stretched up and kissed me on the cheek.
"Time to go", she said.
We went to her car and she drove to her flat. It was in an old block built around a central courtyard, of the sort you find in Paris and Rome and St Petersburg and so many European cities.
"I'm afraid the lift is out of order", she said, apologetically. "It's on the third floor." So we climbed the stairs, me carrying my bags, and we reached her door, she unlocked it and we walked in. She switched on the light and I got a brief impression of a corridor of books and bookshelves and suddenly her arms were around my neck and we were kissing. We kissed deeply, longingly, as if we had been waiting for this moment all our lives. Our kiss reached a natural pause, we broke off and she led me into the living room. It was small and cosy, with a sofa and a television and shelves of books, of all sizes and on all subjects, as far as I could tell with a brief glance. I noticed, though, that there were some large gaps on the shelves which she had tried to fill by placing some books on their sides.
Frijda went into the small kitchen and brought out two glasses and a bottle. She gave it to me to open - a rather good German wine, I noted - I poured, and we chinked glasses and drank. I looked round the room.
"You do love reading, don't you?"
"Oh, yes. But you know that."
"I'd guessed. What sort of thing do you read?"
"See for yourself. I must leave you for a moment: supper is in the oven and I need to get changed."
So I looked along her bookshelves. She had all the classic authors - Hugo, Tolstoy, Dickens - and quite a collection of French writers, Balzac, Colette, George Sand. I flicked through some large format illustrated books: there were travel books on Indonesia and Peru, a large book of photos of Paris seen from the sky, and a number of books on fashion. I looked through these - she obviously liked elegant styles in black and white. I smiled as I found exactly what I expected - a little collection of books of the designs of Coco Chanel. By now the delicious smell of meat was coming through from the kitchen, and suddenly, quite without warning, the lights dimmed. I looked round and gasped.
She was wearing a corset. A dark, richly patterned corset in burgundy and black. She wore a silk dressing gown over it, with stockings and heels, and round her neck she wore a black velvet choker. It could have looked like something rather cheap and tawdry from Moulin Rouge; instead it looked almost impossibly beautiful, elegant and erotic.
"Do you like it?"
"Frijda, you are unbelievably beautiful. Stunning."
She smiled.
"It's for you," she said, "but also for me. I love it. I feel so sexy in it."
"How did you lace it up?"
"I've had it on all day. Waiting for this moment."
And she came over to me and kissed me, running her tongue along my lips. Then she turned, looking at me coquetteishly.
"Dinner first."
In case you have not had the experience of dining with a beautiful woman dressed in corset and choker, let me tell you that it is every bit as arousing as it sounds. Far from being a distraction, the food becomes part of the increasingly erotic atmosphere, even if - as here - not a word is spoken about sex. We talked about Hungary, about Budapest, about London, about her dreams to visit England and how she had always wanted to see Oxford and Cambridge, and then I asked her what her favourite English books were. I was expecting her to say something like Wuthering Heights or Tess of the d'Urbervilles, so her answer surprised me.
"Sherlock Holmes. I love those stories. I love the atmosphere - how I would have loved to have seen Victorian London. But above all, I love his brain. How he thinks and how he works out the solution. So clever. So logical. So sexy."
