'The Tall Girl from Somerset' 3 Henry

HENRY

The best years of your life and 'The Merchant of Venice'.

I was always Uncle Henry, and I still am, I suppose, though now I’m a

great uncle if we’re strict about it.  I saw Anne, well, I saw them all, Anne and

her parents, three times a year, at Christmas, at Easter and then once in the

summer.  This was our pattern, and it lasted for many years, through the 50s and

early 60s, all the years of her childhood anyway.   It’s still the normal shape of

the year for me, I suppose.   Every year the same!  You see I lived in Chiswick,

and they lived in Somerset, in the village of Berringford at the foot of the

Mendip Hills, so there was a distance.  It took much longer to get about in those

days.  In the 50s and 60s England was a much bigger place than now.  The

journey from Somerset to Yorkshire took a whole day.  We would drive slowly

through the cities, through the towns and through the villages We saw church

towers from a distance and then we came up to them.  We saw the big gardens

of the houses just outside the village and then the pub and the post office and

the pond as we reached the centre.  There were no motorways then, you see, and

I think we were all the better for it.  We savoured England as we drove through

it.  We knew where we were. 

Not that often, was it, three times a year?  But at least I was always available.  I

may not have done a great deal with my life, but I’ve always been around when

wanted.  I suppose that’s something.  It’s not much, but it’s something, and in

spite of all the dreams we have when we are  18, in the end we have to rely on

these little things.  They matter, the small things we have actually done.  I hope

they will pull us through.

Anne finished school and was just about to go to university, I remember.  That’s

Not an easy time, you know.  Going back over 60 years, I remember how I felt

when I started.  Is it that long?  That sounds an awfully long time, but the years

just pile up, you know.  They accumulate.

You expect so much of university, and, to make things worse, people

expect so much of you!  They tell you that you’re about to embark

on the best years of your life.  Embark!  It’s a place, not a boat for heaven’s

sake.  Well, they are for some people, I suppose!  The best years, I mean. I

enjoyed them, but then I am middle of the road; neither clever nor stupid,

neither full of energy nor lazy. 

‘It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean.’ That’s from 'The

Merchant of Venice’.  Nerissa was right.  She was in the mean too, I suppose. 

My English teacher at Waterbury, Mr Morgan, used to say that the ordinary

characters in Shakespeare existed just to show us our place among the

others, the great ones.  He said that we are really on the level of the servants and

the country yokels. I think he was exaggerating a little, but he had a point,

didn’t he. He made us think. How he hated it when we retailed the views of the

critics in our essay.  ‘But what do you think?’ he would say. ‘I’m not interested

in what the book says.  What do you think?’

Anyway, like Nerissa, I am middle of the road and there’s something to be said

for it.  Where would we all be without the man in the street or the one on the

Clapham omnibus?  How could the great ones stand out if there were no

ordinary people like us to stand out from? 

Yes, perhaps they are the best years for some.  But they are not a happy time for

a lot of others, and I don’t think they were for Anne.   I have a suspicion that

she wasn't happy, though she never said much to me.  Young people have

such a capacity for suffering, such a capacity for putting themselves through the

mill. When you’re old, you can’t even suffer with intensity!  Thank

goodness!  University!  It can be three years of purgatory, self-inflicted

purgatory, but none the less painful for that!   

Ah well!  Let’s go on.  Yes, I think we’d better move on.