Oxbridge
Flash Fiction
After graduating from Owen’s (Manchester), I applied for a PGCE course in Cambridge, and lived for a year in that famous city. My friend Hansraj was in his final year at Owen’s, and we kept in touch by exchanging letters every 2 or 3 weeks. We rarely used the phone. In the past we had both hitchhiked, and he had expressed the desire to come visit me for a long week-end some time soon.
Hansraj would later become a professor of History at the university of Mauritius, but he was already absent-minded.
I was delighted when he phoned to inform me that he was planning to come for a visit in a week’s time, hoping to arrive late on Friday.
I got a few beers in, cooked a Mauritian meal, and waited. I knew that with hitchhiking, he would not appear before at least four, but possibly nearer midnight.
At midnight he was still nowhere near. Then shortly into the new day, the shrill ringing of the communal phone in the hallway exploded into the still night. I knew it was him.
Did you say your address was Bateman Street? he challenged me. I confirmed this.
But not even at the Police Station have they heard of Bateman Street. Are you sure you don’t mean Bateson?
Hansraj, I said losing my patience, you’ve written me more than once to 11, Bateman Street, Cambridge, you_
Cambridge? he said as if in shock.
He had hitchhiked to Oxford.
