The Tall Girl from Somerset 6 Harvey

Harvey   

A long walk, a short year and a parting.

Saturday afternoon came at last though it had only ever been hours away.  Time is never constant.  It dawdles and almost stops before that longed-for first meeting.  Yet it runs away from you during an exam.

“I’m going to see you today.

All’s well with my world.”

So sang Joyce Grenfell, and it describes pretty accurately how Anne felt on Saturday morning.

Not the most original idea, is it?  But it’s well expressed. That’s what happens with love, isn’t it? It’s the same story through the years. But for each young couple it’s new and exciting and that’s the beauty of it. Well, well.

That Saturday afternoon, when everything should have run like clockwork, Harvey's car would not start!  Such is the cussedness of machines! He cycled to Anne’s college, explained about the car, and it really didn’t matter, and they decided to walk to the centre of Oxford.  As they left Anne’s college, a don was sitting in the gardens, and she smiled at them as they passed her. Perhaps she thought of when she had been young and in love.  And what happened then? We do not know. But she smiled at them as they went by. They walked through the Parks, slowly by the river, down to the centre of the city, had a coffee and then walked back again. They could have carried on walking together for hours and it wouldn’t have mattered where. They talked and talked and when they had nothing to say, they were also happy. And then on Sunday they met again.  Oxford had suddenly changed for both of them.  The cold mornings and the dark evenings of November no longer mattered.  

The days passed, the weeks passed and then the months. The year went by too fast, too fast for both of them because they both knew it was Harvey’s last at Oxford.  For Anne, the beginning of her first year had started been difficult. Like so many students fresh from school, she had felt lost and overwhelmed.  But after meeting Harvey, she felt that her first year had become the realization of all that she felt that university would be when she had thought about it at school. At school the sixteen year-old looks forward to “university”.  It is the Promised Land, where anything can happen. It fulfils the hopes of some.  For others, it can be a terrible disappointment. For Harvey his last few months at Oxford were the very happy culmination of a happy time.  He had gone through university easily, one of the lucky few to ride carefree over the mountains of youth.  He hadn’t wanted to change the world; he hadn’t wanted to feed the hungry masses of Africa at a stroke or to bring down the government in one massive demonstration in Trafalgar Square.  Managing a reasonable pass in his exams and making it into his college rugby team, playing cricket in the summer and then some acting and a lot of parties.  This had been enough for him.  The world was OK as it was.  If he could enjoy it and help one or two people around him to do the same, then that was as much as he wanted.

The university year is short anyway, but for Anne and Harvey it seemed a matter of weeks.

They met in November.  Autumn fell into winter, and it rained and it was muddy.  The frosts came and went through the rugby season.  Spring grew into summer, the hedges turned green and when summer came, so did the exams.  And that is the university year at Oxford.  Like youth, it is very short.  And like all wishes, you only have three.  Three short years.

There had been many happy drinks and walks.  There had been hours spent together in the consuming business of the day-to-day: shopping and eating, going to the cinema and mending punctures on Anne’s bike.  ‘Why do his tyres never puncture while mine always do?’   Writing essays, looking for books in libraries and talking late into the night.  ‘He took me to films and I took him to concerts.’

But then in September when the year becomes serious again, they parted. Yes, they parted.  “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”  Harvey wanted to be a teacher and went to Manchester for his year of teacher training.  Why Manchester for heaven's sake?  Why didn’t he do this year in Oxford?  He told Anne that he just needed a change and that, he told himself, was the truth.

What could Anne do except look forward bleakly to her second year, a year on her own?

Secondary school in the early sixties did not equip its sixth formers for a love life. Double maths, double French.  No double tactics of love. And Greek and Latin?  What had Anne learned from that?  Dido deserted by Aeneas?  Ariadne dumped on Naxos?  Not much encouragement there!  She had no resources to fall back on, no way of making him stay, and so Harvey went to Manchester.

‘I’ll never forget the day he left though I hate remembering it.  It was a Tuesday, and it was a wet and misty Tuesday. Tuesday, of all the days of the week, is the day I hate the most.  When has anything good happened on a Tuesday?  I was OK while I helped him pack.  I could find things, sort out things and then pack them up.  If you’re doing something, you’re OK. It’s having nothing to do that’s terrible.  That’s when the mind opens and the worries rush in.  Before he left there were even one or two bright moments, I remember.  One was when I counted 23 single socks.  I made a pile and counted them.  Yes, he had 23 odd socks. But then it was all finished, the bags were done, and the last tea was drunk, and the mugs were washed and that was it and he left.  The Mini went up the road and round the corner and that was it.  Don’t watch him out of sight!  That’s bad luck!  Who said that?  It was Grandma.  I remember she used to say that.’

And Anne watched the smoke of the exhaust as the overloaded Mini struggled up the road, and she felt sick.  Her head was heavy, her stomach was weak, and life stretched ahead.  She tried to keep busy.  Going through all the steps of making a meal was a help, but then the meal was made and it was eaten, alone, and the plate was washed up and life had to be faced again.  “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

So where’s the sweetness?   Only when there is a tomorrow.  The line needs the rhyme and people need something to look forward to.  You must have something on the horizon. 

A night’s rest helped, and so did the things that had to be done next day.   Love is never fair. It lifts you up for a time, and then drops you down again, and then you are worse off than you were before.

Two more years to go.  Two more years to do for her degree.

So during those sad days in late September, when the mornings and evenings are damp with autumn, and you think you can cross the lawn without getting your shoes wet, and so you wear your shoes, and you come back to the kitchen with them soaked and you wish you had worn your wellingtons, in late September then, Anne slowly packed her suitcases for the new university year.

‘Why shouldn’t I meet someone else?  But I don’t want to meet anyone else.  Work, work work.  That’s always the solution, isn’t it?  How do retired people manage without a job to help them through the day?  Friday evenings must seem so ordinary to the retired, who have not earned a Friday evening or looked forward to it.  Yes, that’s the way forward.  Work.’