She was in her forties, as I am now. She had a huge mane of gray hair, somewhat unruly. She wore glasses that were big and thick and she looked squinty behind them. Her clothes suggested the Baader-Meinhof Gang or the Red Brigades. (Fatigue pants were not out of character. I think I saw her wear a skirt once or twice.) For all of this, she was quite beautiful. Perhaps she had been totally dazzling in Swinging London, back when. She occasionally made reference to this bygone era. For example, she’d seen the Pink Floyd play (meaning, I imagine, that she had seen the elusive Syd Barrett), and she had strong opinions about the Doors. By 1980, though, she was no longer interested in the razzle-dazzle of popular culture, or that’s my surmise. She was an adult. In her jacket photographs she often appeared without her glasses, and the beautiful, mischievous part of her was more than obvious. It was a reservoir in her.

I didn’t have time to think about this on that first day. I was registering my impression. My recollection is that Angela talked in an extemporaneous way about the kinds of fiction she liked, mentioning, for example, her friend J. G. Ballard, mentioning her interest in folk literature, science fiction, and the like. Her manner felt very British to me, though I can’t, at this remove, tell you if she spoke with a Midlands accent, or a London accent, or what have you. She was mild, offhanded, and yet not shy about her opinions.