I've never been there, New York, I mean, but I can imagine it. Manhattan, Ellis Island, the Statue, the famous Italian restaurants with their avuncular managers, the 'diners' especially, customers huddled around the counter, the men with jacket collars turned up and the women with cigarettes held up high asking for a light, the sheer friendliness of everyone; even the run-of-the-mill coffee shops which I'd prefer to our 'greasy caffs'. There's even a place called Port Authority; now that is a puzzling name. I think I'd love the place; I might be a little wary of some areas, what I've heard of as the Bronx , for example, but worrying about whether I'd ever like it is neither here nor there, because I can't fly. There was a time once when George and I were thinking about going there. Was it our honeymoon? I forget now exactly. No, I remember where we went for the honeymoon; Austria, of course. But we discussed going to New York. George was crazy about America, all those years, but I couldn't go, and, by sea, well, that always proved to be impractical, even as the crossing time got shorter.  I think I lived the place through him, and the movies, of course. 
     There's a painting by Edward Hopper. I still have a poster of it, a little yellowed by now, from George's chain-smoking. It shows a rather bored usherette standing in the doorway of a cinema, and to the side you can see a plush cinema, and a part of the screen, just some snowy mountains: I've always wondered whether it was an actual movie. Sometimes we argued about that; could it have been Lost Horizon or maybe For Whom The Bell Tolls? That episode went on for ages; I can't remember if we ever checked the dates of those films. We should have known, really. You see, George was a projectionist and me, I was an usherette (sometimes I sold the tickets too) when we met. My sons are both in America now. Peter is in property or real estate as they say over there, in Florida, and Martin works for a film producer in L.A. It is one of those ironies that Peter, who I get on much better with than Martin, is in a business I have absolutely no interest in. I always expected Peter to do well, but Martin . . .  well Martin went off on his own after school and for years I didn't even know where he was. But that is water under the bridge now.
       But the painting. I often look at it and try to put myself inside her head as she waits there, what story she is part of, in her life. Is she sad or just bored? There aren't so many people in the auditorium, I would say. I don't know much about painting, but the year is 1939; that's on the poster, so my guess is that the war in Europe is on her mind. She is pretty, too pretty to be just an usherette. She even looks good in her curious dark-blue uniform with its thin red stripe down the side of the leg, tight around her body, baggy as it reaches her legs. Yes, she has a boyfriend, and she is afraid that America will go to war (that phrase always rings false to me, as if going to war was as normal as popping out to the shops for something). So she's in New York; that much is also clear. She met Jack a few years before, after coming to the Big Apple from somewhere upstate, as they say. She wants to be an actress, like every other dame in town (O.K., that's more George doing his Jimmy Cagney accent), but she doesn't have the money to get to California, and a friend told her to break into the theatre first, where she could be spotted and possibly pick up a British accent.
     After the film she meets Jack outside the cinema. He's dressed smartly, in a trilby; he reminds her of Cary Grant, even more than usual, as well as which he's British; he's a journalist working for the New York office of his newspaper. He's cheery; they'd arranged to go out for a meal before the declaration of Britain's involvement in the war, and she'd been afraid he was going to cancel it. But instead he was making an occasion of it.

Jack had chosen an Italian restaurant, complete with red-and-white checked tablecloths and carboys on the walls. It was small; the lighting was dull, and the ventilator gave out the occasional jerky asthmatic cough, like a stranger whose habit suddenly reminds you of a friend you haven't seen for a long time. On that evening Jack was looking as she thought she might some day remember him; though he was small, he was broad-shouldered, and when he sat, straight-backed and attentive, and leant back very slightly, placing his hands on his knees, he commanded authority in an unexpected way. In this pose he looked thoughtful and strong, and she felt as if he held her future in his hands.
    'You know I'll have to go back, don't you?' he says.
     Inside she's on the verge of tears, but she doesn't have Bergman's weepy face; she's more Lauren Bacall, her expression and posture stoic, statuesque, and that's how she sees herself looking back into his eyes.
     'To fight?'
     'I want to report; it'll be dangerous, but I've got to do something. You understand that, darling?'
     'I'll come with you.'
     'What, to France?'
     'I'll wait for you in London.'
     'London might be bombed. I think we can be reasonably certain of that. No, you have to stay here. It may not be so long.'
     He lights another cigarette and offers one to her, but it's a joke. She hates cigarettes, and it's about the only bad habit he has.
     'They're going to get scarce, I should think, soon,' she warns.
     'Just about everything else too, I imagine.'
     'Do you really have to go? Can't you report from Washington, or something?'
     He ponders her plea a moment before taking another puff on the cigarette. 'I can ask the office in London, but I think it's unlikely.'
     This she interprets correctly as, I'll ask them, half-heartedly, for your sake, but I really hope they don't say yes.
     They kiss for perhaps only the fifth or sixth time before she gets a taxi back to Queens. He stays downtown to join his journalist friends in a nightclub. She trusts him, as handsome as he is. In her flat, as she draws the curtains, she notices a rather podgy man in a white string vest staring at her from across the courtyard.

Between the sirens and the first bombs falling I only had one thought: will George be all right? I rang him in the box first of all and he started the drill ('Three Blind Mice'). I opened the doors with Bill the manager and we just got everyone to the shelter as quickly as we could. George was always the last out. He wanted to leave everything neat and tidy, take the films off the reels and put them in the cans. It wasn't strictly necessary. After all, I always said, what difference is it going to make if a bomb hits? He just said, 'When your number's up, it's up; if I'm going to go, I'm going to go doing my job.' Or sometimes it was, 'I don't care how much mess Jerry wants to make, he's not going to catch me out.'
     He'd applied to the RAF and was still waiting for a reply when the raids started. Why are they taking so long? he complained. I didn't want him to join up, believe you me, but I was proud of him. We'd shown a lot of documentary and war films by the time the worst of the bombing was over, but our favourite was A Matter of Life and Death.  They have a different title for it in America; over there it's called Stairway To Heaven. In the end George was never called up. He didn't pass the medical and he never told me why. But we both did air raid duty and once George went into a burning building and saved a young child. After the war, George stayed in his job (the cinema survived) and I brought up the kids. We moved to Camden Town from south-east London. I don't think the people there were so much different from the people in Deptford, really.

She never hears from him again. After the war she sees his name in a newspaper (but she doesn't follow it up). By that time, she's a married woman. Philip is a baseball player. He's as all-American as can be. She doesn't actually like baseball. She wasn't looking for an American guy all these years, but he's a good man; they've got plenty of money, and he's crazy about Ben, their son. Occasionally she works at the cinema and she goes to every British film she can see. They mostly don't excite her much, until the sixties come along. Then she wants to go to England, she wants to go to Liverpool, she wants to go to Carnaby Street and walk down the King's Road. It's a passion. When she's finally ready, Philip doesn't want to travel. Over the years, with all the travelling to games, he's developed a fear of flying. Besides which, he's a team coach now and he can't or doesn't want to find the time. She leaves Ben with Philip and gets on the plane. She's a fifty-year-old American woman, not so brash as most Britons have come to expect; she's going somewhere on her own for once, like someone in a movie, she tells herself.
   One day she goes to Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly. Her gaze, its focus momentarily scrambled by dreamy thoughts of all that's happened since the war, falls on a young child, a boy in a red-and-white checked T-shirt, playing with the remains of a cake on his plate. His mother scolds him, somewhat harshly. Helen (that's the name I've given her) is transfixed by the boy. I know that face, she says to herself, and looking up at a man who has just walked up to the table, she finds herself looking at Jack. 'Oh, my God,' she says, and faints.

''Hello, Mum.'
     'Peter. Where are you?'
     Like squadron leader Peter Carter in A Matter of Life and Death. Almost as handsome as David Niven, but now he has an American accent. Did I ever tell him that's where we got his name from?
     'Mum? Can you hear me?'
     'Yes, love. Where are you?'
     'I'm here, in London.'
     'Oh, wonderful, can you come ...'
     'I'm only here on business. I want you to come and meet me in town. I'll order a taxi. O.K.?'
     I struggle a bit nowadays getting around, but I'll be fine. So kind of him to get me a taxi. All that way.
     George has been gone ten years now. Peter never fails to visit me once a year, sometimes more. Martin -- he's the younger by three years -- doesn't come over so often. I think I'm repeating myself now. I'll have to go back and check that.  I often wondered about having children. I was afraid. But every time I see Peter or Martin, it's like George is still here, forever.

Helen wakes up on a chaise longue. The room is plush with purplish velvet chairs. A woman's hand is feeling her forehead.
     'Where am I?' she asks.
     'In the manager's office.'
     'I can't believe it. Jack?'
     'Yes, it is me.'
     She tries to ask something else.
    'I know what you're going to ask. I'm sorry.'
    'After all this time.'
    'That woman and the boy, are they your wife and son?'
    Jack gives out a short laugh.
    'She's a friend; she had to go. My wife died, some time ago now, but I have a son. But what about you?'
     With his help, she lifts herself up, and looks at his face, the
horizontal becoming a pleasing vertical, the dream perspective
disappearing.
     It really is him.
     'Well, I've got a husband and a son too, now.' She says it as if she is not quite convinced by how it sounds.
     'That's great!'
     'I didn't say a good husband.'
     His face falls immediately, worried.
     'I'm joking, Jack. He is good. And Ben, he loves Ben.'
     'Not like the Helen I know.'
     She laughs and he recognizes that broad husky New York tickling at the back of the throat.
     'Listen, I've got an idea. Let's go for a walk in the park.'

I get to the Ritz in no time, it seems. I say my name to the doorman just outside, and he smiles knowingly. Just as I am about to go in, I see a middle-aged couple walking, together. They aren't touching, but seem locked together by a sense of purpose.
     Then someone escorts me to the restaurant.
     Peter stands up from the table the minute I come in.
     He looks good, slightly plumper than usual.
     'Mother!'
     'Peter, how are you?'
     'I'm good.'
     Now, really, what  kind of English is that?
     'Sorry it's so rushed. I'm only in London for one day. I've got to get the evening flight back.'
     'Well, I'm just glad you've found the time.'
     'I've actually done the main business. I didn't think I'd be free at all. That's why I didn't tell you I was coming over.'
     'Have you seen Martin? Is he O.K.?'
     'He's good. I saw him just last week.'
     'Well, that's a relief.'
     'You worry about him too much. He is nearly thirty-five.'

Helen and Jack walk slowly around the park.
     'I miss New York,' he says suddenly.
     'So do I. We moved to Texas years ago.'
     She stops. It's like a dramatic scene in a film.
     'Are you going to tell me, then, what happened. Let's get the unpleasant things over first.'
     It's almost like Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson having the chance to talk, years later, about what went wrong, she thinks.
     'I'm sorry. The answer's banal, but true. I went to France, but not as a journalist. I ended up flying, and met a woman.'
     'Hoorah for H.E. Bates,' she quips, with an air of being not totally convinced of her glibness. Then, 'A French woman?'
     'No.'
     'An English woman, then.'
     'She was an American.'
     'Not a nurse, surely?'
     'She was in the air force too, actually.'
     I don't want to hear any more, she says to herself.
     'We used to go back and visit her parents often. When we were in New York and I used to pass by some of our places . . . .'
     She thought, Could he possibly mean me still?
     ' . . .  sometimes thought I might bump into you. Crazy, don't you think?'
     'It sure is.' Then,  'I'm still in love with you, Jack.'
     He looks straight at her; his eyes are watery. Is it old age or is he crying? she wonders.
     'I know, I'm sorry.'

'You really should get over your fear of flying, mother.'
     'Peter, you talk as though I'm a young woman missing out on the best years of her life,' I laughed. 'I'm really very happy.'
     'What do you do with yourself nowadays, anyway?'
     'Oh, you know, this and that. I'm learning to paint. There's a lovely man who comes to the centre on Tuesday evenings. I'm learning how to use the computer too. Imagine! What about you. I'm sure you're having far more fun.'
     'You know I don't have much time besides work. So tell me, mother, what do you really do?'
     'With all my time, you mean? Well, I think a lot, of course.'
     'What are you doing when you're thinking, mother?'
     'So many questions!'
     I paused a moment. I could see a space opening up, somewhere between the now of where I was, thinking about my life, how it had turned out, and the space I went into when I thought of the woman I had imagined in that painting.
     'I'm thinking of taking up writing, actually.'
     'Writing? Have you actually started anything?'
     'No, not exactly, but the story is there, in part anyway. It's to do with this painting I have.'
     'The Hopper?'
     'You haven't forgotten.'
     'How could I?'
     'I'd like to hear this story.'
     I was suddenly taken back to Peter's childhood, when I used to tell him stories, stories I had mostly embellished from novels and films, remembering his raptness. At the same time, I felt as if something were pulling on me, I felt an urge to be in another place, as thrilled as I was to see Peter again.
     'Peter, have you got time to go to the park. Just ten minutes or so?'
    ''Well, just about. We'll have to hurry.'
     And then, as we came out of the hotel, I finally decided that if I saw them there in the park, where I expected, I would tell Peter what he wanted to know.