To wish everyone Merry Christmas, this is a short story of Candy and Terry. It is Christmas Eve in Stratford-upon-Avon. The title is "83 Miles" I hope you enjoy reading. 
83 Miles
Marylebone Train station
Bicester North
Banbury
Leamington Spa
Warwick
Hatton
Claverdon
Bearley
Wilmcote
Stratford upon avon
He will arrive home in ten stops. He knows. He counts backwards every time the train halts to a stop. He has done the same route many times now.
London, Marylebone Train Station to Stratford -Upon - Avon. Eighty-three miles.
He is the principal actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company. During the spring and summer months, they performed Shakespeare's plays at the Royal Shakespeare theatre.
But during the winter months, with the RS Theatre closed, he looked towards London. The big theatre productions in the Old Vic, the Haymarket Theatre, the National. The decision was to seek work there. He is still a new name in the British theatre stage. So he had to audition for everything but his career seems to be on the right track. He doesn't complain.
On the contrary, he consider himself blessed.
They arrived with his wife from the States in Great Britain, last May, the year 1925. The discussion about where to stay was brief. She liked the idea of the small town so they made Shakespeare's birthplace their home since then.
She loves it there, she says.
He just loves being with her, regardless the "where".
She has not started working yet. There is a local hospital in Stratford, not big, but there is some bureaucratic procedure she has to follow to enlist herself in the Royal British Nurses Association. They also have to decide whether she has to take the British nationality.
Real life details
some big and some small
some important while other trivial,
Getting acquainted with their town, their neighbourhood, their parish.
Finding the baker, the butcher and the grocer, shopping for supplies,
Furnishing their quaint cottage.
Making it their home.
Ten and more years, living in New York, he had forgotten how small the thatched Tudor cottages were.
He has to watch for his head every time he walks through the front door. Candy says, it feels as if she is living with a giant. For her, the house is the perfect size.
Terry stared outside the window of the train coach.
They had left London. The train was passing through countryside, all covered in thick snow.
He hates winter. Never liked the damn season. Especially snowing. It put him in a bad mood. Like those bad luck superstitions, the theatre people believed, himself included. He waits for something bad to happen if snow is falling from the sky.
But he keeps it a secret from his wife. There is no need to burden her with his phobias.
It hasn't been long since they got back together. Not even a year. Ten months.
It has been a bit of a whirlwind romance. If he had to describe it with one word, it would have to be "heady". Dizzying even. Like a strong liquor you may drink too quickly after a long-term abstinence.
It had been a ten-year long abstinence between them. Without them communicating, not even of the basic form, a card, a word. Nothing. Because of...
He doesn't want to think much of the past.
The snowfall strengthened outside the train's window. He can hardly see anything. And the daylight is dying.
He gets anxious.
Hopes that the train will reach its destination. He curses between his lips. He shouldn't had agreed that last theatre performance in the Haymarket Theatre. They had produced the "Twelfth Night" from Shakespeare for the pre-Christmas season. It has been a success but he hated the fact that he was away for most December, apart from the weekends he spent with Candy, he had left her on her own. His wife was alone and pregnant, although she was not due yet. But she was enough pregnant however to be advised not to overdo it with traveling.
He should have been happy. He is happy but still, real life is not a fairytale. He shifts on his seat. Lights a cigarette. They stop at Warwick station. Four more stops to go.
Outside, it is night time. Still snowing but at least, the snowfall remains hidden somewhat in the darkness.
He feels a wave of guilt inside. He tries to exorcise the somber thoughts that have descended in his mind.
Ten year is a long time to cross, to build a bridge, between the past and the present. He had chewed on that thought for a year and a half and in the end, he had written such a short letter to her; it was almost as if he had distilled his feelings down to the purest form that they could exist.
Desperate hope for a love he was unsure existed. Not for himself!
He had not changed!
He had said so in the letter too. He had to make that clear. Clear as the day's light.
But for her...
He could not be clairvoyant enough... he could not be confident enough...
Had her love still been there?
It could have been that after ten years her heart had changed. Had yearned for another perhaps...? When he had posted the letter, the tingle of anticipation had reached down to the tips of his fingers.
But for a change, his fate had smiled and Candy's love had not changed either. She had remained at Pony's, still single, and still in love. She had confided thus to him in a letter of hers. It was what he had needed to hear.
Like a dry land, parched, in need of moisture, her words came like blessed rain and had soothed his being. He had felt his heart turning to marshmallow.
True. Himself, the eternal cynic, the man of few spoken words, the one with the Olympian brow, the one his fellow Thespians and the theatre crew avoided to come in visual contact with and its iconic raise, because they braced themselves with trepidation of what kind of storm they would have to withstand, having caused the displeasure of Terence Graham.
And they were not exaggerating. Some of Terry's outbursts during rehearsals had been classified as legendary but he was a perfectionist and he demanded others around him to be the same.
Marshmallow heart... That was what had happened in those first two months that took to rekindle the love affair between himself and Freckles. He had overdone it the first few times, calling her Freckles. But he couldn't have enough of the warmth it lit inside him just to feel the word fill his mouth, hear his voice calling her so.
His colleagues had a lot to thank Freckles for. They thought he had been abducted and had some strange experiments done on him. It had been such a marked difference in mood. He actually had not cared whether Hamlet turned into a comedy, or Romeo and Juliet had sent all to hell with, and run away the two of them, partaking in an all-nighter romping, enjoying each other.
His mind had taken a dive to the gutter...
All he could think had been his girlfriend at that time. Yes, they had started dating but mostly from afar. Terry had visited Pony's once, and Candy had spent a night or two at New York.
There were no words to explain what it was to love a woman for more than ten years, never expecting to see her again, let alone dating, and then having everything to happen so fast.
So fast... It was as if they had gone up on one of those merry-go-round contraptions and had lost their heads. Drunk in love. Trying to find their steps. Feeling awkward at rediscovering.... there had been so much ground to cover and they ate the years, the absence, the feelings, the touching, the kissing...
They had behaved like gluttons; Gorged on each other and yet, there had been no dissipation.
Till the moment, Terry received a letter. From the Royal Shakespeare Company. He had forgotten about them. They had been very impressed by the production of Hamlet which Robert Hathaway, with Terry on the aforementioned role, had brought to London some time ago.
The platform superintended from the station came in the coach.
"Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, the train has to stop here. The snowfall has intensified and it is not allowing the train to move on the tracks any further. There are coaches leaving to various destinations outside the train station so I would ask you to please vacate the train and make your way to the coach platforms as soon as you can."
"Bugger!!" Terry shouts a little bit more loud that he should, judging from a few heads which turn to see him, including the superintendent.
He grabs the small luggage he has by his side and a little something he has bought for Candy; all wrapped up in linen and brown paper over it, tied up with a white cotton string.
He feels excited when he puts it under his arm and walks out of the train.
He wants so much to give her what he found by sheer luck and perhaps some sorcery of some sort... because he still can not believe what he stumbled at, at an open market close by to the theatre, where he went during his break between the matinée and the evening performance, the previous day.
He hurries his steps feeling the cold seeping inside his shoes, numbing his toes.
"Is there a coach for Stratford-upon-Avon?" He asks someone that looked like station personnel.
The man pointed him to the right direction and Terry thanks him, even if inside his anxiety has started creeping up inside his veins.
It is Christmas Eve for God sake!
He should buy a car! He has wanted to buy one for quite sometime now, but for the time being, his salary from the Royal Shakespeare Company is modest. That is why he sought to compensate with some extra work in London theatres.
Now with the baby coming in about a month from now...
One more month...
He takes a seat on the coach.
What if Candy gives birth to their child on the 28th of January....? That would have been a fated coincidence, no? His child, his seed, seeing the light of day on the same day he did, twenty-eight years ago.
The coach commences its journey on a road that was fast disappearing. If only luck for once allows him to not have a mountain to climb to reach home. He consciously decides to stay calm. As calm as he can, anyways.
That letter which had arrived last spring at the theatre in New York... had changed everything.
It changed their lives.
He hadn't told Candy by writing another letter. No, he had to see her, face to face. So he had travelled once more to Pony's.
"I have some news." He had said to her.
Her mothers had been also in the room. But he wanted them to hear what he had to say, because they would have a say too.
He had battled inside with how to break the news and having watched her face beaming with happiness, because he had been there, made it painfully difficult for him to even string together the words. At the time he wished he had written a letter instead.
The best way had been the straight way. Just like the brief letter he had sent, two months prior.
"I have been offered the principal actor place in the Royal Shakespeare Company."
There had a brief silence in the room between the three women who had not understood what was the big deal about it. Their reaction had been to burst into wide smiles.
Candy had hugged him at once. Her green eyes sparkling like the sun over a field of green clover.
"But that is wonderful, my love!!" Had exclaimed with warmth and the older ladies followed suit, with their congratulations.
"In England."
The silence that followed the second piece of information had been more of the stunned type he had expected. It meant that Terry would have to relocate even further than where he had been then. Him and Candy had only started to find their feet with one another.
It had been so strange and awkward at the beginning between them. Only the last few weeks it had felt like the ground they walked had started to become level, and some normalcy had wrapped their so-new rekindling of what they had, ten years ago.
Back then, he could tell those had not been the news they expected. Most of all, Candy. He could still see the last flickers of joy fading away inside her eyes.
So before the situation became any worse, he turned towards the two old ladies.
"Ms Giddings, Sister Lane...if you allow me....because I want to ask for your blessing...."
Even reminiscing about it, feeling freezing cold in that slow coach, made his throat feel like cotton wool had stood in its middle. He let a soft cough. They approached Claverdon. If only a little more for the coach to go...
Two more stops after that and he was home.
Not a pin had dropped inside that big kitchen at Pony's, but he had thought he heard a gasp, even if it was faint as a breath.
He had turned to Candy, taken her hand into his.
"We have waited long enough, don't you think Freckles?"
Whether or not there had been a dry eye by then, he still doesn't know because he had a hard time to restrain his own tears and he had to appear a man, old enough to take care of the woman he had asked her hand in marriage, and not some blabbering boy.
But he went through the motions and had knelt in front of her, focusing on the silent tears he remembers, carving her red round cheeks.
He wanted to stroke them and rub the tears away.
"I want to take that next journey together, Candy...with you as my wife, if you do me the honour...."
He remembers her shouting
Yes
and had stood up before she dived in his arms, and he closed them around her, hid his face in her hair that smelled of chamomile.
"Stones do not smell flowers"
While they were in St. Paul's, he had tried to crack a joke and yet, it had been true.
It was her presence in his life that made him take notice of the deep blue colour of the sky and the sweet smell of the daffodils, the wind rustling the leaves on the trees, the breeze on his face carrying the Spring inside it.
He had turned into a hopeless romantic, the boy who used to seek to be bruised and cut, just to forget...
The snow turned into a blizzard.
The coach driver can hardly see where he is going. There is a palpable tension inside the coach. With much effort, taking double the time and even more to drive the same distance it took him to reach Stratford and come back, they have reached Claverdon.
"Gentlemen" The driver says. "I cannot go any further."
The dread of being so close and yet so far from home, hit Terry in the chest.
"It is my stupid luck!" He curses between his teeth.
Christmas Eve
He walks within the blizzard in dim lit streets that are turning empty as quickly as the snow is landing on the ground. Candy would worry. He thinks of her alone in the cottage.
He left her alone a lot. And hates himself for that.
They are newlyweds. They had married at the parish of the orphanage at the end of April. Whatever little time they had named "honeymoon" they spent there. With Candy's mothers, the kids. Albert had been there for the wedding. His visit had been lightning short, just for the day. Stopping between travels. His whirlwind affair had been the Ardley business. He had left the burden to George for too long and felt responsible. The joy however to see Candy getting married to Terry had been evident in his blue eyes.
"Perhaps I can see more of you, now you will move to England, given that I will have to travel to London every so often."
They were waiting for him, to visit in early Spring, the next year.
Archie and Annie had been there. With their own brood. They already had been married for a few years and had two children already. The hatchet between the two rivals had been well and truly buried. Archie had looked happy with Annie...
On the day of his wedding, Terry's eyes had rested for a little on that unlikely couple.
They had looked fine together with their children. Archie had matured and so had Annie.
They were all grown ups now.
He had tried to love Susanna but he couldn't. He couldn't even set a wedding date, despite the fact they had been engaged since almost the beginning. Right after he had returned from Rockstown. He had helped her a lot with her career, hoping she would gain confidence in herself. Wean herself off from Terry but she needed him and he faithfully had stayed by her side till the end. Her health had been compromised by her disability. She had caught pneumonia three years ago. And Terry had brought the best physicians by her side but she slipped away, in peace, while she slept a sleep heavy in sedatives, to calm the incessant coughing.
His grip around the package he carries in one hand while carrying his suitcase in the other, is turning numb. He can't feel his fingers. The snow blows hard against his bare face. He feels his skin raw and sore. The cold is penetrating through his wool coat. For a moment his strength is abandoning him. It is tempting for him to sit down and don't get up again.
But he gets angry.
Heavens stop the self pity. Go to her!! Whichever way! That cursed snow again. Flashes of hospital roofs and frozen tears come to his mind. A red coat, disappearing behind a wall of snow.
Life ain't easy, Terence Graham Grandchester.
A car shows up, a mechanical God-sent gift from above. It slows down and halts next to the young man.
"For heaven's sake, lad! Where are you going on foot?"
"I need to reach home, at Stratford!"
"I can get you up to Wilmcote, lad! Hop in!"
Terry thanked his stars. Drops his luggage at the back and enters the vehicle.
"You were caught up in the blizzard?!"
"I did! Terry replies. "I am returning from London, late afternoon. Train stopped at Warwick. Then, I got on a coach but could not go any further than this town."
The time has gone past nine in the evening.
"Good Lord! A proper Ulysses, lad! It is pretty bad out there. Christmas Eve an' all."
"I need to get home tonight!" Terry raises his voice.
"Let's hope you will. First to reach Wilmcote..."
That is it. One hurdle at a time.
Terry always had the knack wanting to jump everything at once. He lacks patience. But he is learning. She is teaching him.
The time had been approaching fast to leave their old lives behind. The closer they were getting to the set date, the quieter the house of Mrs Pony was turning. The eyes rested longer on each other between Candy and the two women in her life. The stares were turning into glass. There was times of extreme laughing, reminiscing and then followed by silences heavy by contemplating memories.
There were a lot of hugs, many hugs. At any moment, unexpected, for any reason. A lot of tender touching. Tucking stray hair behind ears, giving a hand to get up from the armchair. Folding the washed bedsheets together. An endless searching for reading glasses for the two ladies, with Candy knowing exactly where to find them, every time. Little, menial jobs done around the house with the three women working together, behaving almost like one.
The young couple had spent the last night under the Father tree. Looking at the stars with their backs on the grass and their eyes looking up high. Made promises to look one another, love one another.
And the merry-go-round continued, with dizzying speed. Behind the hugs and tears, the dawning of a new life begun to show.
They became fully a husband and a wife in that cottage in Stratford. Made love and let their sighs be carried alongside the sound of the ancient river of Avon. Terry took on his responsibilities on the theatre, while Candy busied herself, learning to be a housewife. She already was proficient enough with all the household chores and more but still she had a hard time to think of herself as the mistress of the house. He told her to take some help but she couldn't order any one, she had said. It was only a small cottage.
"I'll be darned if I let two rooms and a kitchen win over me." She had said.
Despite her troubles over taking the role of the mistress of the house, she had not such issues learning how to be the mistress of their marital bed. She made Terry to lose his mind. Equally curious and shy at the same time, shocked by the things he would suggest but then eagerly wanting to learn the how to's, pleasing her husband in their intimate moments...
"You must miss your missus, lad." The man behind the wheel says.
Terry turns. Apparently the man was talking to him but he had been elsewhere. "I am." Terry replies with a soft voice. "Very much so."
"I saw her only during weekends in December." He admits and sounds bitter.
"Good Heavens! Why is that?"
"I work as an actor. I am member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, but I took on a part for a Christmas play in Haymarket Theatre. Supplementing the household income you see."
The man gives Terry a better look. "If you excuse my forwardness, can you turn your face towards me, lad?" The man says.
Terry turns and faces the man, who for a moment takes his eyes off the road and looks at Terry more carefully this time.
"Are you the new one??!"
"The new one?!" Terry asks.
"Yes! My wife is a big Bard fan and she practically moved to Stratford during spring and summer to watch the plays. She told me there was a new actor, who was magnificent in his role as Hamlet."
"That is me..." Terry says. He feels the pride inside him and breaks a faint smile.
"By Jove, she will jump through the roof when she finds out that I gave you a lift!"
"Well thank you! Tell her to seek me next time she comes to watch a play, I will be more than happy to give her an autograph."
"Really?! She will hold you on that! You just made her Christmas, son! Let me tell you!"
They arrive in Wilmcote. Three more miles separate him from his love.
The blizzard has momentarily quieten down. Enough for an experienced rider to ride those last three miles, if he keeps on the main road. The man turns towards Terry.
"Lad, you know what? I can give you one of the two horses I keep for the carriage. We don't use them as much now with the car, but you are welcome to borrow one. It looks like the weather has mellowed a little so you have a window."
With the package and his suitcase having been tucked safely close to the saddle, Terry hops on the horse, with ease.
"I'll send someone to pick up the horse." The man says after they exchange details and addresses. "You won't mind if you see my wife too coming to say hi." The gentle man says and laughs a laughter that warms Terry under his skin.
He still is not too comfortable with the attention he gets from women, of any age. But he says nothing at the time. All that matters is to reach home. So he responds equally with a wide smile.
"She is welcome at any time, sir. I am indebted to you, you have no idea how much." Terry says.
The two men wave their good byes.
"Merry Christmas, lad!" The man shouts in the distance.
"And to you too, sir." Terry shouts back.
He now rides in the darkness. The sky has turned crystal clear. The full moon guides him. The snow sparkles under the silver moonlight. He feels the wind on her cheeks and eyes that turn cold but there is a big fire now burning inside him.
He is not far away. He sees the light from the house. Rides off and secures the horse, inside the garden shed. Takes his things off.
Candy is there. Holding a gas lamp. He can tell how worried she was. She secured the lamp by the side of the door.
"I am here..." He says, a voice that can melt the ice.
"Welcome home... my love." She says and runs inside his open arms.
"I am sorry, for being so late, Freckles. I will never leave you on Christmas eve."
"You are here and in one piece. That is what's important right now, Terry." She smiles.
She doesn't want to leave him, but they have to get back inside the house. They kiss. Her lips feel warm on his. "My poor husband, out in the blizzard."
He will tell her all his adventures, just to get the extra attention...
"Merry Christmas Mrs Grandchester." He says and smiles.
"Merry Christmas Mr Grandchester." She returns the greeting with cheeks red like ripe apples.