IT WAS Dublin on a golden, warm September afternoon. I was wearing white; a long white dress and jacket with a white bag I'd bought in a Toronto sale during the summer. I hadn't set out dreaming of diamonds, for I was actually on my way to the needlework shop to buy wool to knit a tea cosy when I stopped to look in the window of a jeweller's shop at the top of Dawson Street. But jewels have a way of ensnaring one and I was lured to the azurite and tourmalines, moonstones and malachite, labradorite, chrysoberyl, titanium and zirconas and never noticed a man coming up behind me, until he whispered "Buy it!" into the back of my neck.
It was not the kind of order to raise hackles or even hairs, for it was a soft command (and the sort of affirmation any woman worth her credit cards would welcome). It was delivered in a lighthearted - but persuasive - voice, the kind of voice which would make one want to purchase a Toyota.
When I looked around the man had gone some paces up the street but he turned and came back down saying "Never have I seen a look that evoked such lust."
If it had been another season, and if he had been wearing red and had a long white beard, I would have known I'd bumped into Santa Claus (or at least, that he'd bumped into me) for the speaker had a round, shining, merry face and dancing eyes. But this happened in the middle of a hot, Indian summer afternoon, and the Michaelmas term was just beginning and one never wears white after Labour Day.
We stood together looking into the shop and I showed him the object of my desire (a pair of gold-knot cufflinks, reduced). I tried to justify my acquisitiveness on aesthetic grounds: shape and form and lustre, sparkle and design, the sociology of ever-changing fashion
His words in answer tumbled out and I wished I'd written them down, for it was pure poetry, everything he said. We stood for a while, laughing, in front of this window perfect for pressing noses against, as small and high as that of a sweet shop on an old-fashioned Christmas card. Then we went our separate ways.
HE went one way, and I went the other, so happy I could have hopscotched the paving stones outside the Mansion House, chuckling to myself that the encounter had disproved the skeptics - I might be a woman over 40 but I had not become invisible - and confirmed that above everything else in the world - fame, fortune, the loot of the lottery or the pick of Aladdin's Cave - friendly interaction between fellow human beings makes for the greatest happiness. He had not offered me a diamond as big as the Ritz, but his words alone made him Midas and I felt as though I had been sprinkled with gold dust.
I smiled benignly for days afterwards, admiring children in the supermarket queue, waving other drivers out in front of me in town. Had it been another season, I'd have done the modern equivalent of rushing over to Tiny Tim's house with a turkey.
YOU don't need ghosts of Christmas Past, Present or Future to remind you re your heart is when you have poets who will engage you on the street. Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but it's hard to beat honeyed words.
For I knew who this man was; it was Brendan Kennelly. At least I think it was Brendan Kennelly. I wasn't wearing my glasses, and though I can identify 18ct gold at 20 paces, I'm not all that good on faces.
