Long Distance
March 3, 2009
This was written on a train. Again, it fizzled out and thinking about it, I’m not sure how I could really finish it off, but I still like the idea so I might carry on with it at some point.
Long Distance
Henry wiped away the condensation that had formed on the window of the bus with the back of his hand. He watched as the endless fields sped past him, the blank green expanse only broken by the occasional hedge, tree, or lonely old house. Every so often, the coach passed by an old and abandoned Little Chef, the red roof faded and the walls cracked and peeling.
Henry had already been on the coach for over three hours, including his quick change in London. He still had several more hours to go, finished all of the magazines he’d blearily picked off the shelves at the offy at 6am. He was at the point of boredom by now where playing Count the Tree with himself seemed like a good way to pass the time. He glanced over at his stack of magazines, the last one still sitting open at the crossword pages. He began to wish he’d bought a bloody pen. The problem with looking forward to being somewhere, thought Henry, is that you usually forget how you’re getting there. He slumped back in his seat, resting his knees against the empty seat in front of him, and started counting trees through the window.
At about ten-forty-five, when Henry had counted three hundred and twenty four trees (and and seventy two bushes that weren’t really trees, but at least made the game a bit more mentally challenging), he felt his mobile phone buzz in the pocket of his jeans. “Hey babe,” the text message read, “cnt w8 2 cu l8r, hope ur havin a gd tym on da bus. luv u xoxo”. Henry cringed at the spelling, but couldn’t deny himself the small, satisfied smile that was pushing itself onto his lips.
Despite Judy’s blatant and unapologetic abuse of the language Henry loved so much, she had managed to capture his curiosity, then, over time, his heart. Which was why he had got up at 5:30 this morning, and was willing to spend hours on a bus to Edinburgh to see her for the first time.
