The Tall Girl from Somerset 28

Anne fights back

Anne had written these notes on the back of an old envelope. The envelope was creased and wrinkled as she had gone back to it so often and read it again and again. She kept it inside her old hardback copy of “Three Men in a Boat”, which was then her reading each night.  She needed something to cheer her up. 

1.  More company.  Go out more. When you’re out of the house, you’re out of yourself.

2.  More exercise.  This helps a lot.  The world seems right when you’ve just played squash.  “Mens sana in corpore sano.”  I hope so.  I do hope so.

3.  Regular meals.  Regular sleep.  (Both had been difficult when she had been with Harvey.  But she hadn’t needed any solutions then.)  I’ll try.  (And try she did, genuinely, day after day.)

 4. Divide up the day into manageable bits, such as: from starting work to coffee time; coffee time to lunch; lunch to tea; tea to the news.

Harvey had, quite unconsciously, suggested these divisions of the day to her.  One summer he had taught English to foreign students in Reading near London.  At the first staff meeting, with anxious new teachers waiting for advice on evaluation procedures and teaching methodology, the director had wisely started with an outline of the teaching day, thus: “Before coffee, after coffee, before lunch, after lunch, before tea, after tea”.  This had proved a very practical timetable, and with such emphasis on eating and drinking, the course turned out to be a happy one for teachers and students alike.  Harvey had joked about it to Anne and, while he was wending his way from Syria into Saudi Arabia to take the road that ran by the pipeline down to the Persian Gulf, she incorporated it into her routine.

5. When something is on your mind, just think ‘What is the worst that can happen?’ OK, you didn’t lock the front door.  So what?  The worst thing is someone coming in to rob you.  If you lose the TV, so what? It doesn’t matter. This helps.  This helps.

5.  Take an interest in the weather.  Anne was not really meteorologically minded, but she felt that the weather was something neutral in the world, and therefore it was healthy. It was above moral judgements and the demands of conscience. It was apart from things done or left undone and human worries in general, so see if it’s sunny, Anne.  Go outside and feel the rain.  At night gaze up at the stars.

6.  Look at the birds! In fact look at any animal!  They must be right.  Surely they’re not battling with their own minds as they walk by the hedge or munch grass in the field. The old dog lying in front of the fire is not working out how to tackle tomorrow.  They’re OK.

6.  Get comfort where you can.  The old postman who always seemed pleased to see her in the morning, and gave her a free weather forecast for the rest of the day, the woman who sold fruit in the market, the chatty cashier at the supermarket, whose queue she always chose just for her cheerfulness, all these people helped her without knowing it. They were all happy at their work, or at least seemed so, and this made some sense of the universe.

By resorting to these crutches of normality, Anne kept going, hoping that things would get easier, that the next month would better than the last, and that life in the future would be an improvement on the past.

She told herself to relax.

“Easier said than done!”

 She remembered how Harvey could relax with friends,whether out at a bar for a drink or cooking for them at home.  He was a good cook.  But Anne had to surface to the top of her mind when she was with people.  Conversation cost effort.  Considering answers, asking the right questions, being interested without prying, all this was hard work for her. 

One way of winding down was to take the car, drive out of Bristol, park near Erewhon on the rough, wide track that used to be the old coach road, and then walk for an hour or two on the Mendips. She had walked there for years, and the hills took her back to her childhood.  No responsibilities!  The blessed state of being told what to do!   

She thought about her father. We never give our fathers their due, do we?  They do what they can to carry out their responsibility as they see best. Anne remembered some tiles she had seen on the wall in a restaurant in Barcelona.  There were five and each dealt with the attitude of  children to their father as they passed through different ages and grew up.

Age 6          Dad knows everything.

Age 10        Dad knows some things.

Age 16        Dad knows nothing.

Age 25        I will ask Dad for advice.

Age 35        I wish Dad were here.

She wished her own father were there.  He would have been able to give her sensible advice about so much.  About Quentin, for example.

Anne felt most at ease when walking in the wind, the sun and the rain, but best of all in the rain, that thin rain, hardly rain really, little more than a falling mist. Her Yorkshire grandmother had loved it too and had called it moor grime. Her grandmother had invented little errands outside, things to buy at the shops, just to enjoy a walk in moor grime.  And then, of course, friends who saw her walking had stopped their cars and insisted on giving her a lift, which she had been too polite to refuse. 

One thing Anne knew for certain.  She would never give up.  She would not let it get the better of her.  She would work and lead a normal life (‘What is normality?’).  She would go on.