Just One Ticket (Part One)

‘Just one ticket is it?’ the lady at the booking office asks.
‘Yes, just one ticket,’ I reply. I can’t find anyone to go with me.’
I think back to previous events here. I once bought tickets for four of us; who were all keen and eager to go. Then over time one by one they had dropped out; and then even their replacements had dropped out. Until all that was left were two of us waiting for a third. She did not turn up or even call to explain why not. We had ended up taking the school caretaker and her husband who we saw locking up the school gates. They came with us in their working clothes, hungry, and without a chance to eat an evening meal: two lovely people.
There had been the time when I had driven around streets trying to locate someone who did not have a car. ‘We’ll meet you there,’ I’d suggested to the organiser. ‘No, it’s better that you pick her up and drive back here and then we can all go together in my car,’ she had said firmly.
I had whirled around impossible suburban cul-de sacs in the strange town until finally I found the right place. I’d driven frantically back to my town and striven to drive across the breadth of it, to meet the other.
There was an impossibility of traffic lights, all set at red, to negotiate.
When we finally met the organiser she was impatiently fuming by the side of her car.
We arrived at the theatre late, after getting lost in a maze of roundabouts in the third town. The performance had already started and we were not allowed in for half an hour.
It left an atmosphere between us. We stood like thistles during the interval, in spiky silence.
Then there was another occasion when I had bought tickets for just two of us.
‘Sorry, I can’t go.’ the other had said late in the day of the event. I’d rung another friend.
‘We have to set off at seven to get there,’ I’d explained on the phone. Then I had waited in her hallway as she changed from this outfit to that and the minute hand swept the face of the clock.
Not knowing the quickest way from her house to the motorway I had taken an age to escape from the town. ‘You should have gone that way,’ my companion had said as I’d missed a turning. She’d glanced at me with a superior pitying look. And I’d felt like a fool. And despite tearing down the motorway at speeds unknown to man, we were late and had again to wait yet again to be admitted.
‘Yes, just one ticket,’ I reply. I can’t find anyone to go with me.’
‘I’ll give you a nice seat then,’ the kindly woman replied.
And she did.