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sport to chase every penny and trap it: perhaps they thought it was converse begging, or some sort of London custom, like Pearly Kings. The young man himself bobbed and weaved among the European feet, and eventually it was he who emptied a handful of change back into my purse, with a wide white smile, and, just for a second, pressed my hand to reassure me. Amazed, I gazed up into his face: he had large blue eyes, a shy yet confident set to him; he was six foot and lightly bronzed, strong but softly polite, his jacket of indigo linen artfully crumpled, his shirt a dazzling white; he was, in all, so clean, so sweet, so golden, that I backed off, afraid he must be American and about to convert me to some cult.
    When I arrived at the library, an ambitious number of chairs—fifteen, at first count—were drawn up in a semicircle. Most were filled: a quiet triumph, no? I did my act on autopilot, except that when it came to my influences I went a bit wild and invented a Portuguese writer who I said knocked Pessoa into a cocked hat. The golden young man kept invading my mind, and I thought I’d quite like to go to bed with someone of that ilk, by way of a change. Wasn’t everybody due a change? But he was a different order of being from me: a person on another plane. As the evening wore on, I began to feel chilly, and exposed, as if a wind were whistling through my bones.
    I SAT up for a while, in a good enough bed in a clean enough room, reading
The Right Side of Midnight
, making marginal annotations, and wondering why I’d ever thought the public might like it. My cheek burned on a lumpy pillow, and the usual images of failure invaded me; but then, about three o’clock I must have slept.
    I woke refreshed, from no dreams: in a cider-apple dawn, a fizz and sharpness in the air. Out of bed, I rejoiced to see that someone had scrubbed the shower. I could bear to step into it, and did. Cold soft water ran over my scalp. My eyes stretched wide open. What was this? A turning point?
    I was on the crowded train for eight, my fingers already twitching for my notebook. We had scarcely pulled out of the station when a grinning young steward bounced a laden trolley down the aisle. Seeing his Ginormous Harvest Cookies, his Golden Toastie Crunches in cellophane wrap, the men around me flapped their copies of the
Financial Times
at him, and began to jab their fingers, chattering excitedly. “Tea?” the steward exclaimed. “My pleasure, sir! Small or large?”
    I noticed Large was just Small with more water, but I was swept away, infused by the general bonhomie. I took out my purse, and when I opened it I saw with surprise that the Queen’s heads were tidily stacked, pointing upward. And was there one more head than I’d expected? I frowned. My fingers flicked the edges of the notes. I’d left home with eighty pounds. It seemed I was coming back with a round hundred. I was puzzled (as the steward handed me my Large Tea); but only for a moment. I remembered the young man with his broad white smile and his ashen hair streaked with gold; the basted perfection of his firm flesh, and the grace of his hand clasping mine. I slotted the notes back inside, slid my purse away, and wondered: which of my defects did he notice first?



“How Shall I Know You?” Copyright © 2014 by Hilary Mantel.
    All rights reserved.
    For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
    eISBN: 978-1-4668-8181-5
    â€œHow Shall I Know You?” was first published in the
London Review of Books
, 2000, and reprinted in
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories
(Henry Holt, 2014).
    First eBook Edition: August 2014
    This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this story either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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