She said she was American, and if she’d been born and raised in Montana I suppose she probably was, although I later learned that Montana is considered something of an oddity even among Americans, at least those from the more celebrated states like California, Texas, and New York. (I always thought Florida to be the oddest of American states, you know. It sort of dangles limply at the bottom of the map, reminding one of things about which one would prefer not to be reminded.)
In any event, the young woman in question (I think it best that I don’t give her name, just in case any reader from America should know someone of that name who was born and bred in Montana and feel disposed to dish the dirt, as I gather the vernacular has it) seemed to take an uncommon interest in me. She wanted to visit me at my house after she’d ‘hit the store’, which I managed correctly to translate as ‘go to Sainsbury’s.’ She wanted to accompany me when I went out somewhere. She wanted me to show her the city centre, even after I’d protested that it was as unprepossessing a city centre as she was ever likely to see. When she went to relieve herself she came back still fastening the zip on her jeans, an activity which required rather less time than it took to walk from the bathroom. And twice during our brief liaison she contrived an opportunity to say ‘but then, I’ve never seen you naked.’
Odd, don’t you think?
The point is, you see, she was a post graduate student at a nearby university, so I presume she must have been possessed of a modicum of intelligence. And she was, I would estimate, around twenty five years younger than me. And what makes it even odder is the fact that I was in a bad way at the time, being in a situation which was causing me to suffer the most intense period of acute anxiety that I have ever had the misfortune to experience, so I couldn’t have been the best of company.
I remember her telling me that she was forever falling foul of the law in dear old Montana on account of her refusal to keep her dog on a leash in public places. Maybe she was intent on impressing me with her boldness, a feature of American women which receives mention in both Lolita and The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Maybe it was meant to embolden the cold old Brit who, she undoubtedly presumed, would be more familiar with the more diffident and refined ladies of the Old Country.
It wasn’t long before her boyfriend arrived (presumably also from Montana) to keep her company. We went for a drink and I asked him what he thought of England so far. ‘It’s OK,’ he replied with evident reluctance. As far as I recall, that was all he said for the duration of the evening, and I never saw the Woman from Montana again, and she never did get to see me naked.
Now it occurs to me to wonder whether she ever thinks of me as she approaches the privations of middle age. I expect the dog is long gone.
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