Remembering Carmen by Nicholas Murray Page A

like all in the party, in her late thirties. She had very short black hair and was dressed in loose white linen which seemed to accentuate a certain delicate pallor in her complexion. Christopher watched Carmen looking her up and down, appraising her. It did not occur to him that she was assessing her as one might a potential rival. Carl and he talked a little shop until Carmen cut them short and drew the conversation on to more congenial subjects. The party was sitting, on this hot June evening, in the open, penned into a little enclosure on the pavement in front of the restaurant with a fine view of the comings and goings. Frith Street on these summer nights attracted crowds of lively, noisy people. Outside the pubs, large groups spilled on to the pavement, hugging their pint glasses to their bosoms, or swigging from chilled bottles. The men, Christopher noticed, always seemed to outnumber the women in these groups. At other cafés and bars and small restaurants, tables had been placed outside, as if, for these few weeks of tolerable weather, London was prepared to transform itself into a Mediterranean café society, in spite of its knowledge that the scope was brief and that the tables would eventually have to be stacked up and put away after a short exposure. Tourists and clubbers and idlers thronged the street. Cycle-taxis clustered in wait for trade at the junction with Old Compton Street. There was a queue outside Ronnie Scott’s. Joanna, Christopher felt, was a little detached from everyone else and the conversation. Her attention was taken by the people on the street. He was just about to wave away a rose-seller when Joanna stopped him and took a small bunch, crushed into cellophane, from the Balkan woman who carried them in a quiver in the crook of her arm. She laid the flowers on her white lap and it suddenly struck him how beautiful she looked. Carl and Carmen had locked horns over some movie about which they disagreed violently and were ignoring them. Christopher smiled at Joanna.
    I was wrong, Carmen, he considers. I was so ready to blame you but I too was culpable. I used your willingness to go your own way as a permit for my own adventure but I paid a price which I now regret. There was no love like yours (I want you to think this too, wherever you might be) and I squandered the advantage. That was the mistake we both made. We tore up the title deed to our mutual happiness and scattered the pieces in the wind. It is for this reason that I lie alone here, listening to the dull traffic hum, the shouts in the street, wondering what has become of the free spirit I once thought myself to be. It is why I struggle to recoup the lost memories of our time together, remembering, painfully, what I so carelessly threw away.
    A week later, coming down Windmill Street with some brass hinges that he had just collected for a job from Windmill Tools and Hardware, Christopher saw Joanna as she tripped out of a small gallery. She was the first to wave. He suggested coffee. They talked, laughed, found a chance to discover some common ground that their brief outdoor meal had not quite allowed them to establish, and parted easily. He thought, for both of them, that was an end of it. And then, unsurprisingly, for she and Carl rented a mansion flat near Gower Street, he began to meet her – accidentally but quite frequently – in the little streets of Fitzrovia and Soho where most of his work was to be found. Often, potential clients would walk into a place where he was working and ask for his card. In this way he did not have to look for work elsewhere in the capital. He and Joanna mostly contented themselves with a quick coffee, because he did not have much time to spare, but once or twice, when he was between jobs or waiting for some sub-contractors to complete a component of the refit, he was free for lunch. The summer continued to bathe everything in a rather steamy heat. His eyes would sting with what he assumed