Have we met?

Did you ever meet someone you’d swear you’d never met before? Converse with them? Touch them? Know them? All in the first glancing contact of eyes, the first shake of hands the first exchange of words?

I ask this partly to answer a question for somebody else and partly for me. To see whether anybody else has ever experienced the strangest thing that ever happened to me.

It happened some years ago. I’m an Engineer by profession and a company buy out and asset strip had left those of us unprepared to uproot with time on our hands. I put my CV around various companies and agencies and took a job with the phone company as an operator to keep the wolf from the door. I did my 3 weeks training to learn how to drive their computers and how to handle emergency calls for the Fire,Police and Ambulance – we covered the Central,North and West London areas so I expected it to be interesting as I was to work on a permanent night shift.

After passing the set tests I went with my headset and books of destructions to the Switchroom, feeling like a new kid that joins a class halfway through term. I sat by myself the first couple of nights, then noticed that some half noticed glances in the corner of my eye were becoming more frequent. I caught one and it hit me like a 155mm artillery shell. And another….and more …and more over the next couple of days, each accompanied by a smile so warm, so utterly beautiful that of course I smiled back- how couldn’t I?

Then came the source to me, unbidden and of her own free will. We would talk there in the dimlit gloom of that nine-tenths empty switchroom, talk of the deep and the dark, shock ourselves with what each knew without learning of the other’s dreams and desires, fancies and failures. We agreed that we had undoubtedly known each other before. It was too complex for coincidence. My heart was played and played right back as we flew through the clear lights of time, space and history, embracing without touching, caressing without contact, understanding without the sweet joy of expression. We knew that we had been before, we recognised each other immediately, we told each other.

We knew of course that we had other commitments and duties. We knew that if we continued to fly together that we would inevitably want more – and that for always. That what seemed inevitable must be made impossible as maybe it always was. So a line was drawn by the hands of two and never was it to be crossed, lest others, innocent and trusting, be hurt. An unforgettable parting took place and it was the nearest thing I’ve known to a bereavement. But it will happen again, as it has happened before and so many times across these centuries – you’ll know it if you see it. No one got hurt but me and the Witch of Time and I hope that this cold unfeasibly weighty stone that I carry in my heart is penance enough for being in a circumstance against which I was essentially powerless.

It is why I always doubletake when I catch a waft of Paris from a woman.

It is why I can’t hear the word “Seattle” without a groan escaping my soul and,

It is why I wonder if anybody else has known someone at another time. Before.