The Tall Girl from Somerset 38

PERTH AGAIN

Like a snail its shell, we carry our past.  One June, in the garden, on the corner of the lawn by the Peace roses, Anne handed Harvey a coca cola and he opened it, threw back his head and started to drink, and at that moment the  coca cola took him back to Perth, and he was back in the vegetable market at 6am.  He had already opened about forty sacks of potatoes and thrown them on the belt.  It was his first drink of the hot Perth day.  The women packers were drinking their cups of soup and chatting about the TV programmes they’d seen the previous night.  He was back in Perth until he shook his head, and opened his eyes and saw Anne smiling at him, pushing back her long hair.  He looked around and saw the pale blue mass of forget-me-nots in flower, the lilac tree behind them and the clouds rushing across the sky late for an appointment in East Anglia.   Perth had been good, and now this was good too.

We do not change much.  Anne still had her daily battle with herself, with starting the day, but living with Harvey was like breathing a fresher air.  She was not going to be beaten.  She was going to carry on. She’d keep plugging away. However bad a day was, however little she could concentrate on things or get stuck into things, it didn’t matter.  She was going in the right direction. She had a family to form, though that is another story, work to do and jobs to get finished.  She looked westwards through the pines that grew in the Johnson’s garden at the old vicarage, and through them she saw the hills of Wales.

 “I will never give up.  No, I will never, never give up. Nil desperandum!”  She smiled and then she went back into the house, found Harvey in the kitchen and started to help him prepare dinner.