LONG DISTANCE LOVE
Prompt - Long Distance Love : Write about a couple that is separated by a distance
It wouldn't have worked out that way nowadays, would it? But this was over forty years ago. No mobile phones, no social media, no video calling. No means of staying in regular touch except by (expensive) landline and the art of letter writing. In longhand. On paper. And putting it into a letter box. But you try telling that to the kids today....!
So the warning signs weren't there, weren't available. Which made it all the more surprising when they flooded in on that train journey from Waterloo to Portsmouth Harbour. With me sitting there wondering if she could see them too?
Annie and I had met at a party about two and a half years before, where she'd drunkenly started playing footsie with me under the table, then proceeded to drag me on to the dance floor and drape herself around me, admitting no others, before keeping a tight grip on my arm and taking me along to her flat. I wasn't going to argue, because she was gorgeous (too gorgeous for me?) and I'd liked her as soon as I'd seen her.
This happened only two months before I was due to leave Edinburgh and head off to live more than four hundred miles to the south. I was, at least, honest with her about that. So the relationship felt doomed from the start, and perhaps that made it more frenetic than it might otherwise have been. I'd been looking forward to my big move, but Annie spoiled that - suddenly I had a good reason to remain. Twas not to be though.
We parted with sadness and joy, and thought we'd only ever be friends. But the connection persisted. Six weeks after I left I fell ill. With glandular fever, the disease Annie had only just recovered from when we first met. They call it 'the kissing disease', and we'd certainly done a lot of that. When I was finally well enough to return back home we met again, at another party, got talking, and conversation turned to our shared experience of unwellness. It brought us close again and, somehow or other, I found myself back in her bed. But it still felt doomed.
Nonetheless we stayed in touch more frequently, and when I came returned for the second time we spent a lot of time together, and decided that we were a couple after all. Of sorts. This was continued on my next trip up, even though there were many months between each. And talk turned to having a holiday together, to find out just how much this relationship was worth. Money was tight, camping was the answer. I lived in warmer climes, so that would be our starting point.
The plan came together as Winter dawdled past, Spring rushed by, and Summer arrived. I'd got together all the gear we needed, identified likely sites for pitching. She'd come down to London on the train, I'd go up to meet her, we'd come back down together. The letters got steamier, the phone calls longer, my sighs louder and excitement greater. And then I was on my way. But.
Something didn't feel right, and I had no idea what it was. Until Kings Cross. She came off the platform. She looked the same. Smiled the same, walked the same, looked pleased to see me same. But. But there was no response from inside. I made myself smile, say the right things, hug tightly, but it had become more performance than passion. The train trip down proved that whatever was there had gone AWOL, and at the worst possible moment. I didn't want to spend a week in a tent with this woman. After eight months if thinking of just that, for large portions of every single day. How could that happen?
I had no answer. Nor could I keep the performance for long. She stayed two nights, and I saw her off on the train to London. We'd be sort-of friends for a while after that, but I'd hurt her badly and within a year I'd seen her for the last time.
These memories don't come back to often, but when they do I feel such guilt, such anguish for causing pain and handling it so badly. Would I have been able to do things better with today's technology?
Would I?
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