明らかにする／漏らすd: The love letter-令状ing beauty who left her heart on a bus

By Michael Thornton for MailOnline
Updated: 10:18 BST, 23 January 2010

It was a tantalising mystery: who left a bundle of 匿名の／不明の love letters on the 支援する seat of a coach? Only now can the captivating answer finally be 明らかにする／漏らすd.

The 直面する that smiled teasingly up at me from a page in a newspaper last month sent me spinning 支援する 46 years.

'Who's that girl?' 需要・要求するd the headline.

But I knew 即時に who she was before I'd even read about the mystery that had arisen 関心ing her.

I knew because she had played a 決定的な 役割 in my life.

She was not only the most beautiful creature I ever saw, and the first girl I fell in love with; she was also the glamorous and fascinating catalyst who introduced me to the London of the Swinging Sixties.

Enigmatic: A photo of a young Anna Paton 設立する at a bus 駅／配置する in Bristol

How could I forget her?

For more than 40 years I had wondered what had become of her, and had made several 不成功の 試みる／企てるs to trace her.

Now, through a moment of absent-mindedness and a piece of lost 所有物／資産／財産, she had suddenly become headline news.

The mystery began in the summer of 2008 when a purple plastic 捕らえる、獲得する, left on the 支援する seat of a coach that 終結させるd in Bristol, was 設立する to 含む／封じ込める more than 70 黒人／ボイコット and white photographs of a beautiful, dark-haired young woman.

With them was a large bundle of 熱烈な and いつかs poetic love letters, written between 1963 and 1974 to a Mis s Anna Paton at 演説（する）／住所s in Knightsbridge and Chelsea in London, Barcelona in Spain, Capetown in South Africa, Sydney in Australia, Antibes in フラン, and Lisbon in Portugal.

Many of the letters were tied together with pink 略章.

There were love 公式文書，認めるs that must have been sent with bouquets of flowers, and several handwritten poems.

The letters all began romantically, 'To my love', and were 調印するd, 'God bless you my darling, my lover. X'.

One two-page poem was 長，率いるd, in Elizabethan style, The Lover's Complaynt On his Evident Incapacity To Fulfil His Mistress Her 仕事':

簡単に to gratify my Anna's
? curious 楽しみ
Is it really honest to 略奪する poor 墓／厳粛／彫る／重大な's
? golden 財務省s?
T'will be the only pinching I am likely
? to be 許すd
Unless I goose her 内密に in the middle
? of a （人が）群がる.

FirstGroup plc, the company which operated the coach on which they were 設立する, logged the plastic 捕らえる、獲得する and its contents, which was kept for one month.

No one （機の）カム 今後 to （人命などを）奪う，主張する it.

Staff wrote to the 演説（する）／住所s on the letters. No one 答える／応じるd.

Finally, after 18 months of silence, the company 解放（する）d 詳細（に述べる）s and photographs to the マスコミ in a 企て，努力，提案 to trace the elusive owner.

Anna Paton was always mysterious and 隠しだてする. I vividly 解任する the first time I ever saw her.

Lost mementos: Letters to and photographs of the mysterious Anna Paton

It was 1964. I was 22 and had just become London's youngest na tional film and theatre critic, teased by one gossip columnist, on account of my 青年, as 'the only critic in (n)艦隊／(a)素早い

Street who needs an adult to …を伴って him into an A-feature'.

I was 緊急に in search of a central London flat. A girl whom I knew told me: 'There's a 広大な／多数の／重要な pad going 近づく Harrods. But you'll be lucky to get it - there are already more than 30 people after it.'

The 演説（する）／住所 was 10 Aubrey House, 13 Basil Street, Knightsbridge. I rang the bell and a （疑いを）晴らす, light 発言する／表明する said: 'Come up.'

The door was opened by a radiant and 破滅的な creature who looked as if she had stepped straight out of a 絵 by Goya or Degas.

A cloud of raven hair with streaks of 赤みを帯びた-gold in it でっちあげる，人を罪に陥れるd a 直面する of 驚くべき／特命の／臨時の delicacy, with the bluest of 注目する，もくろむs and a mouth that seemed somehow to be laughing at the world.

She 堅固に 似ているd the young Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany's; but there was also an 空気／公表する of 冷静な／正味の composure that 解任するd Vivien Leigh, at the 高さ of her beauty, as Scarlett O'Hara.

Everything about Anna betokened a 努力する／競うing for perfection. The 着せる／賦与するs were expensive, in perfect taste, and worn with unconscious style.

手がかり（を与える）s: Anna with perhaps her mysterious lover Xavier in a foreign city

She was, at a ちらりと見ること, what used to be known as 'a ノックアウト', and had what is now 述べるd as 'the wow factor'.

I stood in the doorway silent and transfixed. Something in her 表現 示唆するd that this was a reaction to which she was やめる accustomed.

She gave a little laugh and said: '井戸／弁護士席, do come in.'

And I entered a room that seemed to have been designed as her personal 行う／開催する／段階 始める，決める. It was small, but exquisitely furnished - by herself - with the use of bold, 劇の colours.

The cushions were in unusual shades of ochre, yellow chartreuse and lime green.

即時に I saw myself living there. She was watching my 直面する with amusement. 'You like it then?' she 問い合わせd.

'Oh yes,' I replied. 'But I am told there are a lot of people ahead of me.'

'Yes,' she 譲歩するd, 'but I want to find someone who 控訴s the flat. You see, this place is very special to me. I fell in love here.'

She looked at me appraisingly and said: 'You'll do, I think.' She 手渡すd me a card and said: 'Come to that 演説（する）／住所 tomorrow and you can 選ぶ up the 重要なs.'

The に引き続いて evening, I 現在のd myself at her studio in the King's Road, in a 封鎖する almost opposite Chelsea Town Hall.

She （機の）カム to the door with a paint 小衝突 in her 手渡す. Even in an artist's smock, she still managed to look utterly sensational.

I looked at her 絵s. Each one was 遂行する／発効させるd with the same 劇の use of colour as my new apartment.

Style: Anna, who enjoyed art while living in London, 提起する／ポーズをとるs in two portrait photos

The 最新の 絵, standing on her easel, showed a young woman with a cloud of dark hair and a faraway 表現 in her 注目する，もくろむs. She looked like someone with a secret; enigmatic and elusive.

She 解任するd my compliments about her work.

?'I paint for love,' she said, 'not for ambition. It's important to love. It doesn't 事柄 who or what, so long as you love.'

The adorable Anna opened doors for me into the heady world of London high life.

My 近づく 隣人s in Basil Street 含むd two Beatles, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, 同様に as their Svengali, Brian Epstein.

Two streets away, the 悪名高い Kray Twins, Ronnie and Reggie, ran their nightclub, Esmeralda's Barn, of which I became an habitue.

And around the corner in Hans 三日月 lived the fabulously rich and eccentric Guinness heiress, Maureen, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, who, when she wasn't showing me Princess Margaret's 私的な letters over lashings of シャンペン酒, would 成し遂げる hilarious impersonations of the 売春婦s who had appeared in 法廷，裁判所 before her third husband, 裁判官 John Maude.

This was the high society world in which Anna moved, and in which my callow infatuation with her stood no chance at all.

Michael Thornton: Anna's ex-flatmate

She had a bevy of ardent male admirers, but seemed to 持つ／拘留する them all at arm's length. One, Sir Winston Churchill's son-in-法律, the 閣僚 大臣 Duncan Sandys (who counted the 伝説の Margaret, Duchess of Argyll の中で his conquests) told me that Anna was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Another, an inordinately rich peer of the realm, not usually 公式文書，認めるd for his 利益／興味 in women, 保証するd me: 'I'd lay 負かす／撃墜する my coronet for her tomorrow if only she would give me a second ちらりと見ること.'

But Anna had 注目する，もくろむs for only one man - a man with whom she had fallen 深く，強烈に but disastrously in love.

He was a young Spanish doctor, Xavier Pi-Sunyer, born in Barcelona but educated and trained in the 部隊d 明言する／公表するs. Both were 29 when they met while he was working as a junior registrar at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London.

They became, やめる literally, besotted with each other, and began an 事件／事情／状勢 of 驚くべき／特命の／臨時の intensity. He was six feet tall, with dark Latin looks and a moustache.

Anna adored him. She had 設立する the man with whom she wished to spend the 残り／休憩（する） of her life.

But it was never to be. For Xavier was married to a young American girl, Penelope Wheeler, from a 豊富な family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And 存在 a Roman カトリック教徒, not even his overpowering passion for Anna could 説得する him to 離婚 his wife and abandon their three daughters - one of whom, Olivia Pi-Sunyer, became the writer and director of the 2000 Hollywood film, Something 甘い, starring award-winning actor Daniel J. Travanti.

Anna, born Muriel Mayklim Jackson in Australia in 1933 to a 井戸／弁護士席-to-do family with Scottish 家系, had been married herself, in 1953, to a young Australian, Peter ヒース／荒れ地 - an event ch ronicled on the society pages of the Melbourne newspapers.

But the marriage was short-lived, and in 1956 she changed her 指名する by 行為 投票 to Muriel Mayklim Paton, before moving to London, where Muriel Paton became Anna Paton.

In 1963, Xavier Pi-Sunyer left Britain to work as visiting lecturer in 薬／医学 and 予防の 薬／医学 at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, and it was now, while they were parted, that his love letters to Anna began.

From Nigeria, he wrote to 'Darling Anna': 'I think so much of you and feel you're very の近くに to me these thousands of miles away'. He ends: 'I love you. Xavier'.

In 1967, after a family holiday, he 令状s to his mistress: 'My love, I 行方不明になるd you so during my holiday.

‘We went to Cyprus, where there was that lovely purple sea, swaying trees and softness in the landscape, and a marvellous luminous light in the evening which is such a feature of the eastern Mediterranean islands. Be 井戸／弁護士席 and I may be happy. I love you. X.'

After two years as Anna's tenant, I moved to a larger flat in Bryanston Mews East, where my next- door 隣人 was Mick Jagger.

Life there was not 平和的な, as the Mews was 包囲するd daily by Jagger's 積極的な teenage 女性（の） fans. Anna chortled with delight when she heard this.

'I told you that you should have stayed in my little flat,' she said.

I was to see Anna only once more, やめる 突然に, several years later, in St Ives, Cornwall, where my aunt had a house.

There, on a 風の強い spring day, with the gulls circling and shrieking above us, I turned and was astonished to find myself 直面する-to-直面する with my former London landlady.

Anna was still beautiful, still elegant, still stylish.

'Whatever are you doing here?' I said.

'絵,' she said. 'I have a studio 近づく the beach at Porthgwidden. I grew tired of London. I love it here.'

I had never met Xavier. She had never once について言及するd his 指名する, but I knew she was 伴う／関わるd with a married man, and that their 関係 meant everything to her.

'Is it still the same?' I asked, and she knew すぐに what I meant. 'Yes, it is still the same,' she said, 'and it always will be.'

And that was the last I saw of her, with her hair blowing in the sea 微風, turning 支援する to laugh and to wave to me. And then she 消えるd from my life, and also from the lives of many of those who had known her.

Xavier's career now became based in New York, where he was 長，率いる of endocrinology and 糖尿病 at St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Centre.

His love letters to Anna - at least, those discovered in the purple plastic 捕らえる、獲得する - end in 1974.

There is something infinitely poignant and touching that 34 years after their last known communication, she was still carrying the treasured mementoes of their love 事件／事情／状勢 with her on a coach trip.

But when the coach ended its 旅行 in Bristol, Anna left the purple plastic 捕らえる、獲得する c ontaining Xavier's letters, and the photographs of them together, behind on the 支援する seat.

And so the 熱烈な love 事件／事情／状勢 that both had struggled to 隠す for so many years became known at last to the マスコミ and to the public.

Professor Xavier Pi-Sunyer, 76, is today one of the most distinguished and 尊敬（する）・点d doctors in the world, and a 主要な international 当局 on 臨床の 栄養, 糖尿病 and obesity.

He and his wife Penelope now live in an apartment on West End Avenue, Manhattan. Both have been generous 寄贈者s to the Democratic Party in 最近の years.

Yet 明確に mindful of the 影響 on his wife of the 出版（物） of his youthful 事件／事情／状勢, Xavier Pi- Sunyer 否定するd that he is the Xavier who wrote the love letters when 接触するd a few weeks ago.

He （人命などを）奪う，主張するd never to have heard of Anna and even 否定するd working in Nigeria at the same time that the letters were written.

However, his own published CV makes （疑いを）晴らす that he was there at the University of Ibadan in October 1963, when the first letter (on the university's 長，率いるd notepaper) was written to Anna.

Anna Paton, on seeing her photographs and her lover's letters published in the マスコミ, 教えるd a solicitor to 接触する FirstGroup plc on her に代わって to arrange for the return of her 所有物／資産／財産.

She would neither see nor talk to any 代表者／国会議員 of the coach company, nor give interviews, nor 明らかにする／漏らす where she is living. But the purple plastic 捕らえる、獲得する, with its 証拠 of Xavier Pi-Sunyer's love for her, has now been returned to her.

非，不，無 of this surprises me. Anna was perhaps the most elusive and enigmatic person I have 遭遇（する）d in all my long career in journalism.

存在 直面するd, in old age, with the world-wide 出版（物） of a very 私的な 関係, and with its doomed finale when the love of her life chose to stay with his wife and children, must have been a 破滅的な experience.

Yet even now, for me, she 保持するs her fascination. Albert Einstein once 観察するd: 'The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.'

Anna Paton, like the tantalising smile on the 直面する of the Mona Lisa, has kept her mystery to the very last.