ANOTHER VOICE

The day I nearly kissed an unknown young woman on the Tube

AUBERON WAUGH

Last Tuesday, on 3 October 1989, I woke up feeling unusually pleased with myself. I cannot explain why this should have been the case. It just happened. Others must experience the same sort of thing. Sometimes one is irrationally elated to the point of insane conceit, at other times dejected and self-recriminating. On this occasion I was the former. Having no one else on whom to inflict my happiness, I tripped down the road from my flat in Brook Green to the underground station at Hammersmith Broadway, bought myself a ticket to Piccadilly Circus, smiling inanely at the machine which produced it, and climbed into a train in the absent-minded automaton-like haze which all daily com- muters will recognise.

The carriage was crowded and I had to stand. Seated below me, her nose perhaps on the level of my navel, was a young woman of no particular beauty, although perfectly pleasant-looking. I should guess she was about 25 years old. From her slightly brown face and pointed chin possibly, also, from some arrangement of her light brown hair — I decided she might easily be French, but had no means of knowing. Having glanced at her, I put her out of my mind and resumed my compla- cent meditation.

Two or three stations later, possibly between Gloucester Road and South Kens- ington, she raised her head to stare at the roof of the train. She was totally ab- sorbed in what she saw. Looking down at her uplifted face, but still preoccupied by my own thoughts, I suddenly saw her as a vision of the purest beauty, innocence, sweetness and grace. With less than a quar- ter of my mind on what I was doing in that crowded train I found myself bending down to kiss her.

I will never know whether I intended to kiss her on the lips, as I rather fear, because by great good fortune some guar- dian angel woke me out of my trance when my face was still 18 inches from hers. She was never aware of the intended assault, and probably decided I was suffering from stomach cramps. For the rest of the jour- ney, I found myself sweating and shivering with fright as I brooded on the narrow escape I had had.

For the first half-hour, I fear my reflec- tions were entirely selfish. I had no thought for the unhappy young woman, suddenly finding herself kissed on the lips by a plump, bald, middle-aged stranger in a crowded train. The very least I could have hoped to get away with was a slapped face and evasive action. If she decided to get off at the next station, as she probably would, I could not have got off with her, and would have had to remain in the same carriage, ted-faced and smarting, being stared at by my fellow-travellers.

But that was the softest option. Far more likely, she would have screamed and de- nounced me in a torrent of outrage, using whatever language came easiest to her. What on earth could one say? 'Excusez- moi, mademoiselle. Je regrette infiniment, je ne pensais pas ce que je faisais.' N.o doubt some public-spirited passenger would put me under arrest and take me to a policeman, even if I was not manhandled by a crowd of them.

At the police station, they would ask me why I had done it. I could not possibly tell the truth, that I was thinking of something else and it just seemed the most natural, the most obvious thing to do. No doubt I would tell some more plausible lie — that I had mistaken her for a friend, cousin, niece, daughter, wife. . .

`Perhaps you would give us the name and address of this person you claim to have mistaken her for?'

`Oh, ah, I have forgotten the exact name and address. . .

On the charge sheet, a stolen kiss be- comes indecent assault, which sounds much worse and might indeed cover some- thing close to attempted rape. In the same way, old gentlemen who find themselves caught short in a public place are liable to be charged with indecent exposure, which always strikes me as most unfair, since everybody supposes they have been flashing. Indecent assault covers groping and the equally objectionable habit of pinching, but its name suggests something even more violent and perverted.

One could be sure that no sooner had my name been written on the charge sheet than it would be circulated to the Standard, the Sun and sold 'exclusively' to Murdoch's stinking News of the World, Maxwell's filthy Sunday People. . . Every journalis- tic enemy I had made in 30 years of hard application to the task would move in for the kill. I might be able to laugh off appearing as the Beast of Beak Street or the Taunton Terror for a month or two, but nobody would ever let it drop. How could I expect my dire warnings about junk money to be taken seriously by readers of the Sunday Telegraph if everybody knew they were coming from the Somerset Sex Fiend?

Press interest might even have per- suaded the court to send me to prison, as it undoubtedly did with Rosie Johnston, imprisoned by the wretched judge for `supplying' drugs when whe had merely fetched some for a friend. So far as one could make out, this was because the gutter press had inaccurately labelled her `privileged'. Reading Johnston's book of her prison experiences (Inside Out, Michael Joseph £12.95) you meet many victims of even more capricious injustice: the gentle 18-year-old who received six years for grievous bodily harm because she had illegally bought alcohol for a delin- quent, 14-year-old sister who proceeded to terrorise the neighbourhood; another woman serving nine months for stealing a bottle of vodka. . . .

It can reasonably be pointed out that I did not kiss the young woman, I was not arrested, I do not face imprisonment, public humiliation or loss of my livelihood. Anybody who calls me the Beast of Beak Street risks an instant writ. Why, then, am I boring on with conditional self-pity? The reason is that having just read Johnston's book, I feel I have looked into the jaws of hell. Prison is a vile place, and I feel ashamed that I have even for a moment smiled that anyone — Lord Kagan, for instance, or Jeremy Thorpe — should be sent there.

I was saved by my guardian angel but it was a narrow squeak. Others may not be so lucky. If anybody finds himself hauled off by the Filth, sold to the gutter press and threatened with a spell in Wormwood Scrubs because of something they have done in a genuine fit of absentmindedness, I hope they will point to this article as disinterested testimony that such things can happen. Of course I am not sure quite how far down the criminal scale this plea in mitigation can extend. Do sane people ever flash absentmindedly? What about the elderly clergymen arrested every year for rubbing themselves against schoolgirls at Wimbledon? I am almost sure that nobody was ever raped absentmindedly. But it is quite possible to kiss someone absentmindedly just because it seems the most natural and obvious thing to do.