AN ANECDOTE REGARDING BEAUTY

When I taught 50 years ago at a big South London comprehensive school with a huge staff, I had a colleague, good-looking young man whose name I have forgotten [if indeed ever knew it] who had an exceptionally beautiful fiancée, one of those real head-turners, whose name I don't think I ever even knew, but who would sometimes, when not doing whatever it was she did do, come in with him & sit in the Staffroom. Don't think I ever even spoke to her; nearest acquaintance we had was sitting in same Staffroom drinking tea at break, but of course we couldn't help sometimes seeing one another across the room.

Well, some months later, waiting for a tube train, I happened to catch the eye of a young woman waiting alongside, & who should it be but? & so, as any acquaintances howsomever distant will on such occasions, it was, 'O hello, how you? how things at Peckham Manor? what you doing these days?' &c. That was all: most formal & phatic of conversations with someone I barely knew. But the looks of resentment-tinged but o-so-respectful greengreengreen envy, that I got from every man who passed because I was privileged to be permitted to exchange words with this angelic·creature·treading·momentarily·on·this·sordid·earth, are something I have never forgotten.

~M~