The Tall Girl from Somerset 33 'Anne. Several phone calls, a map with red pins and Lorna Doone'

Several phone calls, a map with red pins, and Lorna Doone

Saturday

Harvey phoned early in the morning. Twice. Of course, Anne was out shopping. This is what happens when phone calls are important. He rang again in the evening.  She was in.

“What about the Friday after?”

“I really can’t, Harvey.  I’m going to see a film.” (Didn’t he leave me? Didn't he go off round the world?)

“Well, we’ll go together.”

“No, Harvey. You see, I’m going with someone else.”

“Ah, I see.”  The penny dropped, and Harvey had to admit to himself what he had refused to admit all along.

“Well perhaps the weekend after. Put me in your diary, Anne.” 

He said it in a relaxed way, but he had had a shock, which was something he wasn't used to, and he spent the next few days pondering over who this someone else was.

Anne didn’t mind inventing work as an excuse in this game, but she drew the line at inventing people, so she phoned Bob. No, he wasn’t doing anything on Friday, and he’d be around at seven to pick her up.  He didn't ask Anne why she had suddenly phoned him.  He didn’t even ask what film was on.

Thursday

Harvey had a call from Jake, who had also decided to leave Australia and was now on his way home to Ireland.   When Harvey left Sydney, Jake started thinking, and the pull of the green fields of Ireland became stronger than ever. It had always been there in the background but when Harvey had shown that it was possible to go back, Jake felt the need to go home more and more. He was stopping for Friday night with his brother in London before making his way back to County Clare. Could Harvey come to see him in London?  Harvey phoned Anne but she was out again.  Janet Parry-Smith happened to be there (Anne had given her a key) and she promised to give Anne the message. “Tell her I’ll phone her when I get back from London,” said Harvey.

“I’ll tell her.  Don’t worry.”

Harvey didn’t worry and went off to London.

Janet jotted the message down on a piece of paper which she left by the phone.  As usual, fate stepped in, completely uninvited, this time in the form of a gust of wind from the hall window, a wind which blew the note on to the floor, wrong way up, of course, for fate had learned to work hand in hand with Murphy’s Law.   Anne came home at six. The first thing she did was to pick up and throw away that untidy scrap of litter on the hall floor, and the second thing she did was to wonder how soon Harvey would phone her.

Monday.

Harvey phoned and by then Anne had passed three days of self-reproach, doubt, recrimination and everything else she could worry herself with.

Harvey too had never felt less confident, (She might just put the phone down.  What do I do then?), so he had planned the call carefully.  He had thought about where he would invite her and he had listed all the reasons for going there (better reasons than Irish fiddlers).  He would not mention anything connected with his own feelings, and he was ready with at least three arguments in case she simply said no. 

In fact she said yes.  They went out for a meal, and after the meal, at about ten o’clock on a clear night when every star was out to celebrate the event, they walked back to Anne’s flat just off Whiteladies Road.  Anne went into the kitchen to make some coffee.  

'Anne. I'd like to look at that James Thurber book.' 

'It's in my room. On the shelf over the bed. Get it if you like. I'm busy with the coffee. It always boils over if you leave it!'

Harvey went to her room to look for the book that they had been talking about over dinner.  It was a collection of James Thurber's short stories and included “The Catbird Seat”, a story which Anne liked and Harvey hadn’t read.   

What Harvey saw, when he went in Anne's room, was a huge map of the world on the wall.  As he went closer he saw a line of red pins stretching from London to Australia.  It was his route!  Or was it?  It looked like it, but in these days of seeking the east, many travellers took a similar road.  No, there was the detour down to Aqaba.  That wasn’t usual.  He and Jake had gone to Aqaba.  He had gone that very way, so it must be his route.  Anne wouldn’t know anyone else, would she, who went overland to Australia with an Aqaba detour?   That “someone else” that she had gone to the cinema with?  Had he too gone round the world?  Had he gone to Aqaba? No, surely not.  And there was the last pin, stuck firmly in Perth.  It must be him.  Yes, he was sure, 99% sure, that it was his journey that had been pinned to the wall, town by town, over a year.  He went into the kitchen, completely forgetting James Thurber, in fact forgetting everything except the line of red pins running eastwards across the world.  How on earth had she known where he was?

“On Saturday we’ll go to Exmoor.”  Harvey started, with great confidence. “I know a walk that finishes at Oare.  Lorna Doone country.  We’ll leave no later than eight in the morning, and be away the whole day.”

“I can’t go on Saturday, Harvey.  I’ve got a lot of work to do.”  (How convenient work was.)

“You can’t keep this up for ever, Anne.”

“Working on Saturdays?”

“No, not working on Saturdays.  I’ve seen your map.”

She had forgotten the map.  She looked at it every night when she went to bed, the red line pointing eastwards.  Harvey’s sister had kept her up to date with his progress. How many pins had she stuck in?  Was it therapeutic?  Was it acupuncture?  Or was it voodoo?  Had each pin inflicted pain on the person who had left her?  No, it wasn’t that.  It wasn’t that.  

“What map?” she asked quietly, and went as red as the pins she had put in week after week, month after month.

The rest followed. Explanations and confessions. What two young people say to each other, and then think they are the first in the world to say it.  And the rest was easy.  Once the hill is climbed, and there is some honest talk at the top, the rest of the journey is freewheeling. 

Once that little conversation had taken place, and, incidentally, they did go to Exmoor, to the border of Somerset and Devon, and they did go to Oare and they saw the little church with the box pews and the ten commandments on some old wood panels on the wall, where Lorna Doone had been shot by Carver Doone during her wedding ceremony, and it rained all day, as it so often does on Exmoor, and they didn’t notice.  Once they had done all that, they went through the usual steps of thinking about, talking about and finally organising a wedding of their own.

And the rest?  Harvey found a job in a comprehensive school about ten miles from Westington. They married in Langton church, and bought a cottage in Berringford.  No, it didn’t have a thatched roof but it was as beautiful as if it had, in the heart of Somerset, where the Mendips peter out just before they reach the sea.  From their bedroom window they could see the Bristol Channel and beyond that, on a fine day, the hills of Wales.  It was only a couple of villages away from the home of Anne’s childhood.  It was a village of apple trees, narrow lanes, and hills good for sledging. 

Somerset is one of the happiest of English counties, and so it was for them, and no house is better than the house where you begin your married life, short of money, full of energy, scrimping, saving, making do and with your whole life before you.  It doesn’t matter what detached marvels with en-suite bathrooms or listed-building glories you may live in later on, your first house together is the one that matters. To the cottage in Berringford they moved Anne’s few possessions.  Harvey owned almost nothing, little more than a few books, some records and his rugby boots. He had travelled light through life.  Between them they made a start.

Little by little they created a garden. Like so many cottage owners over the years, they were short of time and space but that is how the best gardens are made.  Good gardeners thrive on difficulties.

They painted the walls of the cottage and then the old wooden windows, and they planted potatoes and runner beans. One's first row of runner beans!  There is nothing in life to equal one's first row of runner beans.  'Never sell a house in Somerset without a good row of runner beans in the garden,' Uncle Henry had said.  'It will put pounds on the value!'  They also managed a fine row of sweet peas, and in their first autumn they made wine from the elderberries growing in the hedge opposite their gate.