The Tall Girl from Somerset 11

‘She isn’t crying, is she?  It’s the rain, isn’t it?  Her cheeks are so wet. 

Come on.  Get in the car, in the front.  The heater is better there.  It doesn’t reach the rear seat. Come on, we’ll soon be back.  You’ll soon warm up!’

Kindness helps, but once alone in her room, a tiny box room at the head of the stairs, Anne went to bed, pulled the blankets around her, and cried herself to sleep.

Next morning, Janet tried to persuade Anne to wait and to go back with her to Oxford the following day, but Anne had nothing else to do in Manchester.  Manchester, having promised so much, had nothing else to offer.  She thanked Janet, went to the coach station (of all grim places in England in the 1960s, coach stations were surely the grimmest, with undoubtedly Bristol’s beating all others into second place.  It is better now, much better now, but then it was depressing.)  Anne decided to have one night at home and so took the next coach back to Bristol, despite its coach station.

It rained the whole way, but she was glad of the rain.  It was a comfort.  The noise of the rain on the large coach window.  The droplets blown back in streams.  The gentle swish of the enormous wipers on the windscreen.  The clouds.  She couldn’t have stood a sunny day with its optimism and promise!    Sitting in her seat, as the coach rushed down the M6 in the constant rain, (as least something was constant in this world!), with an elderly woman in the seat next to her munching a Crunchie bar, Anne thought back to the first time she had ever been in Harvey’s room.  Why does the mind play these tricks, when he was the last person in the world that she wanted to think about now?

‘I had lent him George Orwell’s “1984”.  He had lost his own copy and needed to check some quotations for an essay on Unamuno.  In those days we needed the book itself when we had to check a quotation!  No Google to help out then!  Unamuno! One + m + one!   I needed the book to lend it to Janet, and so I’d asked Harvey for it. He was in the middle of making tea, so he told me where it was in his room. It was, or so he thought, on the top shelf of his bookcase.

I pushed at the door.  It stuck, and I saw that there was a huge pile of clothes behind it.  Another pile of clothes on the floor! But these clothes were innocent!  I pushed harder and then, squeezing round the door, I found a heap of dirty and clean shirts, socks and rugby kit all together, mixed up with some golf balls, the last few Observer colour supplements and various coffee mugs.’

Then, like Livingstone about to launch himself into the heart of darkest Africa, Anne summoned her courage, stepped over the huge pile of washing and ventured in.

It was a different world.  There were rows of beer mats round the wall, posters of the Gorges du Tarn and of the aqueduct of Segovia, and a map of the world.  Anne saw a long piece of string which was tied at the head of the bed. She followed it round.  From the bed it went by a system of hooks and pulleys to the light switch by the door, where it was tied again.  On the floor there were scarves, gloves, jeans, coat hangers and books.  On the chairs were shoes and a muddy rugby boot.  Just one.  Where was the other?  This was like the one shoe you see in the gutter.  You only ever see one shoe.  What happened to the other one?  Little circles of dry mud from the studs had fallen on to the floor.  On the desk by the window there were papers, packs of typing paper, two calendars, half a dozen pencils, and three darts with Union Jack flights.  ‘And a photo of me.  Let’s forget the mess!’

Harvey shouted from the dining room, “Have you got it?”

“Of course I haven’t got it.  The whole place is a disaster.”

Harvey joined her, and they eventually found “1984”.  It had fallen down behind the bookcase on to the floor at the back.  Harvey tried to get it but his arm was too big to get under the bookcase.  Anne retrieved it, lying full length on the floor, she could just reach. Just.  And there they had stayed together, full length, long after “1984” had been found and the tea had gone cold.

The old woman finished her Crunchie bar and Anne looked out at the wet fields near Tewkesbury.  

‘Why are the fields always wet near Tewkesbury?’ 

Some land was completely flooded with a few brave trees waving their arms across the expanse of water.  Other fields, a little higher, were merely waterlogged.  The river had lost itself and gone wandering cross-country, patiently looking for the sea.

‘I never wrote to Harvey again, but I didn’t stop thinking of him for the rest of the term.  Then, when term ended, it was back to Erewhon and to Christmas. There were decorations to put up, the holly to cut from the tree in the hedge by the paddock, the mistletoe to find and tie on the lampshade in the sitting room.'

Harvey phoned and explained, of course, but explanations are dull things, and the air was not cleared.  Both he and Anne seemed content to let things rest.  It was a type of truce. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Because of this (or was it only because of this?) Harvey decided to go to Australia at the end of his teacher training course.  He finished his Cert. Ed. in June, and in July he set off for Perth, via India.  He was restless, as so many men are, when they are newly men.  He needed more than a job from Monday to Friday, and an afternoon of sport on Saturday.