The Tall Girl from Somerset. 9 The coach from Manchester to Bristol.

The coach from Manchester to Bristol

Andrew drove along the rainy street. ‘Slow down, Andrew.  There she is.  By the phone box. She isn’t crying, is she?’ said Janet.  ‘It’s the rain, isn’t it?  Her cheeks are so wet.’ 

Janet got out quickly. ‘Come on, Anne.  In you get. 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, as does activity, but once alone in her room, a tiny box room at the head of the stairs, Anne sat on the bed and just gave her feelings full rein.  She let them run full course. Then after a few minutes she could organise her thoughts and begin to be herself once more. Then she slowly 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 and went to the coach station.  Of all grim places in England in the 1960s, coach stations were surely the grimmest, with 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.    As the coach rushed down the motorway 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 original text, the book itself, when we had to check a quotation!  There was no Google to help us 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 in the kitchen so he told me where it was in his room. It was, or at least he thought it was, 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!  They needed a wash but they 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, I summoned my 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.  I saw a long piece of string which was tied at the head of the bed. I 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.  So he could turn off the light without having to get out of bed.  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 happens 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 more than wet. It was flooded with a few brave trees waving their arms to each other across the wide 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, I went back to Erewhon and to Christmas. There were decorations to put up, holly to cut from the tree in the hedge by the paddock, and mistletoe to find in the apple tree and tie on the lampshade in the sitting room so that Granny could be kissed under it on Christmas Day.'

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.