6} RUTH

6) RUTH

Sit down and let me tell you a not very funny, in fact very sad story.  It’s called Ruth.

I met Ruth through the Personal Columns, like so many of the other girls – except that Ruth was different.  She wasn’t a girl, she was a mature woman, and she wasn’t single – she was a widow.

Ruth was the widow of a senior diplomat.  I never knew who he was, or what he did, or how he died.  She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. 

I don’t know how long they were married, whether they were happy, whether they had had children or how long ago her husband had died.  She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.

Ruth was lovely: sophisticated, urbane, dryly funny in that way very educated, very confident, English women have.

And, because she was a widow, I took it very, very slowly; very, very carefully.  I’d call her, and just chat.  Or she’d call me, and just chat.  She joked that when she phoned I was always in a bar and I explained that that was because she always phones in the early evening.

When people ask me where I work I say “Caffé Nero in the mornings, wine bars in the afternoon”.  I work wherever I can get a flat surface for my notepad and diary and a room quiet enough to work the phone.  And these stories I write in the best writing rooms in the world – The British Library or the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford.

Anyway she’d call and we’d chat.  And she’d ask me what I was up to and seemed to enjoy finding out about my peripatetic lifestyle and the girls I was meeting and what I was doing.

And she was always just about to go out to a dinner or a reception or the theatre or the ballet.

But I never even mentioned the idea of meeting, let alone taking her out.

She was a widow, putting an ad in the Personal Columns, and she had to get her head round that, and I had to take it very slowly.

So we chatted.  She knew about everything, and everybody.  If I mentioned a name in politics or the City she not only knew them but sounded as if she’d sat next to them at dinner last night, or heard the latest gossip about them in the corridors of Whitehall or Threadneedle St.

This was going well.

So I started to ask her about what she liked: and she loved the theatre, the ballet and the opera.  And I still hadn’t asked her out, and she hadn’t asked me to ask her out but I was slowing laying the ground and we both said we’d take it one step at a time.

And then I saw it:  The Royal Shakespeare Company production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Novello, which was the newly refurbished Strand Theatre.

Now I love Midsummer Nights Dream, it’s my favourite Shakespearian comedy and the last time I’d seen it performed was in Dublin, directed brilliantly by my older son.  So it meant a lot to me.  And as a first date play it’s ideal: romantic, magical, funny and charming.  Perfect, this was going to go well.

So I asked her, and she said that would be perfect.  She’d love to.

And I said there was a special offer in The Times and what dates would suit her.  And she told me.  And I asked her if she’d prefer to take the pre- or post-performance special offer of a discounted meal, and at which of the proferred restaurants. 

She said when and that she’d prefer a post-performance meal as you have the play to discuss and it’s more open ended. . .

I phoned to book the tickets and they said that, unfortunately, that restaurant was not available on that evening and would I prefer A or B instead.  And I said I’d have to get back to them because it needed to be both of our decision and that Ruth was not an easy lady to please.

And she laughed when I told her and said neither of the options sounded much fun and we could better than that on our own.

So I booked the tickets. 

This was going to go well.

And then she phoned the day before and left a message.  And I know that she phoned very, very early when she knew was able to leave a message and not speak to me.  And she said she was sorry but she didn’t feel able to come.

Now I was disappointed but I could respect that.  It must be difficult for a widow to re-enter the dating game, however gently the guy tries to handle it.

So I mailed her and said I didn’t understand but I empathised.  And I called a while later and we spoke.  And she said she was sorry but she didn’t think I was looking for a relationship.

Now I must say I found that a little hard to take. 

I said that she was going to dinners, to receptions, to the theatre and I was phoning Personal Column numbers and making long phone calls from my empty flat and trying to get her, or somebody, anybody, to go the theatre, or anything, with me.

Quite how did that make me ‘not looking for a relationship’.  I didn’t think I knew anybody looking harder for a relationship.

You can say I’m not looking for the same sort of relationship as somebody else, but please don’t say I’m not looking for a relationship!

And she said we obviously needed to talk.

But we never did.  I phoned, she didn’t answer.

She didn’t phone.

And I tried to give the tickets away but my heart wasn’t in it.  They were our tickets.

And she’d gone.

©peter hero 2006