I'LL BE SEEING YOU

When he bid her goodnight at her front door that cold, late December evening she would never have imagined it would be the last time she would see him.

"Sometimes life steals a fleeting promise of happiness before it has been given a chance to flourish," her mother had said in a delicate attempt to console her distraught young daughter upon the slow, dawning realisation that the man she'd fallen instantly in love with had disappeared forever.

What happened to Arthur Broughton that snow filled winter night in 1929 would remain an eternal mystery to Lucy, who would never stop thinking about the strange and charismatic young man for the rest of her life. Even later, when she'd married her husband Charles, she would wake up in the dead of night from bad dreams that all somehow connected their way back to Arthur. It was almost as if her subconscious was searching for a way to find him and resolve all the unknowns about his disappearance. Was she Eurydice in reverse looking for Orpheus in the Underworld and not the other way round? Possibly. There was a poetry to that notion.

What was it about the young man that had possessed her imagination for so long now? Was it that he represented the possibilty of another life for her and all the excitement, adventure and mystery that would entail, quite the opposite of the life she ended up with. Not that she was complaining per se. She had a great deal of security with Charles and their three children and that in itself was a blessing of sorts.

But it was equally testament to Arthur Broughton's brief appearance in her young life that he'd left such a profound and lasting impression.

"I'm taking requests. What would you all like me to sing for you?" Arthur had asked around the room at the Taylor family's most extravagant New Year's Eve party in their New England home. The enthralled guests were bedazzled by his handsome features and confident personality.

"How about some Puccini?" someone shouted across the room.

"You're on. A little Boheme, perhaps?"

And with that, Arthur's best friend and musical accompanist launched straight into a dazzling rendition of 'Che Gelida Manina' from Act One of Puccini's most famous and beloved opera.

It was in that moment that Lucy knew for certain that God had created this perfect specimen for her personal desire. For the rest of the evening she was like a shadow to Arthur, following him from room to room and eventually persuading him to take some air with her out in the large, frosted garden of the grand Taylor house.

"Are you real? I spent half the evening believing you were a figment of my imagination," she enquired in a genuine state of wonder. "I don't think I've felt so beguiled since I first read about handsome princes in fairytales as a child."

Lucy felt no reservation whatsoever about telling this young man exactly what she felt. His unique beauty and character wasn't something she felt she could afford to be churlish about.

"I'm quite real. I think you're over romanticizing me, however. I'm no mythic creation of your subconscious. Just a happy stranger who stumbled into your parents' most excellent party."

Lucy was even more curious now.

"But you must have been invited here by someone?"

"No, well sort of. Myself and my friend Jospeh were just on our way to another party but got called over by your gregarious father who was smoking outside on his porch with his business associates and happened to include us in his conversation as we passed by the front gate. I suppose you could say it was an invitation of sorts although it was never formally declared."

Lucy was secretly proud of her father for showing the generosity and kindness to invite two random strangers into their home. It might just be the greatest thing he'd ever done for her. Lucy would thank him later.

But later, much later, all of her great expectations about what might have been the most significant encounter in her young life was denied.

For ever since that magical New Year's Eve night, Arthur disappeared like a phantom from her life and was never to be seen again, leaving little clue for her to latch onto outside of a house number of a recently vacated looking property with boarded up windows.

Having made extensive enquiries throughout the neighbourhood over the next few days and weeks, no-one seemed to have any knowledge of Arthur Broughton or who he was. If it hadn't been for Lucy's parents seeing him with their own eyes then she might have believed she had gone quite insane.

And something he'd said to her as he bid her goodnight on the doorstep had haunted her ever since.

"If tomorrow never comes, then let's be grateful this night and our meeting even happened at all."

At the time she thought he was just being deliberately mysterious and poetic in a bid to further secure her heart's affections but on reflection she now believed it was something far more portentious.

The mystery of Arthur Broughton and his disappearance that winter's night was a puzzle that Lucy never managed to solve for the rest of her life. But, of course, it didn't stop her from thinking about him in perpetuity, like a ghost that could never be laid to rest, forever wandering the lonely corridors of her mind.

Watching her husband smoking his pipe, sitting out on the porch of the same family home where her father stood that night when he invited Arthur inside, got her thinking that life is an eternal mystery, one that can be as miraculous and disturbing as a dream in equal measure.