The Tall Girl from Somerset 34 'A Coca Cola, a sunset, Henry and a German beer tankard

A Coca Cola, a sunset, Henry and a German beer tankard.

 

Like a snail carries its shell, we all carry our past around with us.  Still with us are books we have read, the holidays we have enjoyed and the friends we have spent time with. One June, in the garden, on the corner of the lawn by the Peace roses, Anne handed Harvey a Coca Cola.  As he opened it, and threw back his head and started to drink, the taste took him back to Perth, and he was in the vegetable market at 6 in the morning.  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 had seen the previous night.  He was 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.  I spite of all the sensible advice we give ourselves each morning, in spite of all our good intentions and plans for the future, we do not change much. Anne still had her daily battle with herself. Each morning she had to put herself in the right frame of mind to start 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.  She had work to do and jobs to get finished.  She looked westwards through the pines that grew in the garden of the old vicarage, and through them she saw the red sun going down over the hills of Wales across the Bristol Channel in the distance.

 “I will never give up.  No, I will never, never give up. Nil desperandum!”  She smiled at Harvey and together they went back into the house, walked through to the kitchen and started to prepare dinner.

HENRY

I’m so glad it all turned out well for her.  Things so often don’t.  Some young people have a knack of meeting the wrong young people. Some lovely girls marry some terrible men, and mistakes are made, because the young are, just that, young.  And there we are.  But sometimes things turn out well, and I think that they did for Anne.

I don’t see them often, but they always invite me for Christmas and Easter and so I go down to Somerset twice a year.  I stay overnight at a nearby hotel, the Crown. Well, it’s really more a pub than a hotel but it’s just a field’s walk away from their cottage, and that’s the main thing. They always want me to stay with them, which is very kind but I feel happier in a hotel. There I’m not bothering them or taking too long in the bathroom or whatever. Then I drive back to Chiswick the next day.  I am not sure how many more years I’ll be able to do that.  I find driving so tiring now.  There’s so much more traffic nowadays and everyone seems to drive so much faster. There’s always the train, I suppose.  I could take the train back to Paddington from Temple Meads in Bristol, and I know that Anne would pick me up at the station.  I don't like to bother her, though.  I must not become an encumbrance on anyone. 

I know I must never outstay my welcome when I go to visit them.  And I must never begin mumbling ‘When I was a boy…’  That would bore them to death.  I can think it but I must never say it.

I remember, and it was probably when I was a boy but I won’t say so, I promise I won’t, I remember an old German beer tankard that was on a shelf in the lounge.  It was grey with large letters of that old German script in blue. ‘Ein froher Gast ist niemands Last.’ ‘A happy guest is trouble to no one!’ That’s what it said, and it’s right.  Absolutely right.  The things you can learn on German beer mugs!

I’d show you the photos if you had time, but I expect you want to move on. You have things to do.  The wedding ones, I mean.  I still have them.  But wedding photos tend to be boring unless they are your own, and there are always far too many of them, I think.  A sunny day, it was.  In July.  Just about the only sunny day we had that month. I remember waking up to one wet morning after another, all through the month, and then on the day of the wedding, the 25^th it was, the sun was struggling to make an appearance at seven o’clock, and by eleven it was glorious, making up for all the wet days before. Well, you can see it in the photos there. I have finally inflicted them on you, you see!   I drove down the M4 the day before the wedding.  Yes, that’s me among all the grey-headed uncles in the back row there.  The older generation.  Doesn’t seem a minute since I was in the front.  No, not actually getting married, but I was best man a couple of times, you know.  Yes, I was best man twice. Well there.  Always best man, never the groom!  Never mind!

Well, that’s it then. Time to say goodbye. No, not a hug.  I don’t like hugs, I’m afraid.  People do tend to give a lot of hugs today.  I’m a bit too old for them, I suppose!

I’m glad it all turned out so well.