Crossing the Lines

by Melvyn Bragg

  ‘I never see you nowadays, Joe.’ There was genuine regret, even anguish, in Colin’s tone and Joe’s guilt flooded in.

  ‘He’s busy,’ said Leonard.

  ‘You mean I’m not?’

  ‘I’ll get you some tea,’ said Grace, extricating herself with difficulty from the deep armchair. The second stroke had weakened her noticeably.

  ‘I’m off,’ said Joe.

  ‘As soon as his Uncle Colin comes in, he’s off.’

  When Joe was younger, Colin had insisted he call him Colin. Now that his split with Sam had proved to be irreparable, he insisted on Uncle Colin. Joe no longer felt at ease in his company.

  ‘He’s gone off his Uncle Colin.’

  He was a thin, even spindly young man, lank hair over-greased in a failed D.A. style, jacket draped like the much younger Teddy Boys, pasty-faced, a smoker of cigarettes to the smallest butt, in permanent impermanent employment, but with a look sometimes exactly like Joe’s mother.

  ‘No I haven’t,’ Joe lied hotly.

  ‘Have a walk up street with us, then.’

  ‘I’ve got to get back.’

  ‘Who says?’

  Joe had no answer.

  ‘Goodnight, then, Joe,’ said Leonard, looking at Colin. ‘Tell your dad we’ll see him for the quiz as per usual.’

  ‘The quiz I can’t go to? In my own sister’s pub!’

  Colin slammed himself in Grace’s armchair, crushing the newspaper.

  The air was fresh and Joe did not rush across Market Hill. He looked down Burnfoot and beyond in the direction, he had been told, his dad had come from, after the war, walking the last few miles home. He could not remember the return but he had been told more than once that it had happened here, on the steps beside him.

  The moon up now. Almost full. It would be shining on Jerusalem too. Jerusalem the Golden. The Last Supper would have finished. Judas would be off to betray him. Joe tried to settle into the story now, at the end of the day.

  Before he went fully into the pub he stared at the glass middle door which portrayed the little black boy, the Blackamoor, who gave the pub its name and whom Joe had been told, years before, had been kicked to death by a horse in the stables and left his spirit in the pub itself, in the unbroached loft. Joe had heard him there, and been frightened many times. He stared him down.

  There were too many people in the kitchen. The boy made himself some cocoa, took a packet of crisps, went through the small wicket gate up the stairs to his room and after eating and drinking he practised kneeling.

  On newsreels at the pictures he had seen women in other countries walking on their knees at Easter, walking for miles on their knees, crying with the pain of it, even going up stone steps to a church. They set the standard. He was nowhere near. The vicar had said that the finest response to those three hours of total silence from noon onwards that they would share with Christ on Good Friday would be to kneel throughout. Joe had so far managed no more than twenty-five minutes before self-consciousness, or cramp, levered him from his vigil and ushered him into bed to gnaw on his failure. Perhaps it would be better when there were prayers because although everybody else was to be silent, and try to kneel, the vicar had explained that he had to stand from time to time and say prayers, recite psalms. The previous year, not to universal approval, he had spoken some poems from the First World War.

  Joe’s prayers ran out after a couple of minutes. He thought of other things to pray for but the most insistent was that he should pass his O levels so that he could stay on in the Sixth Form. He would start swotting again on Tuesday. People did not know that his father was paying him a wage - in return for jobs about the pub - a wage that would enable him to keep up with Alan. He wanted to declare it so that people would know he was not showing off by going on into the Sixth Form. But why should God be concerned with his O levels especially on a night such as this when all over the world millions of Christians were at one, as the vicar said, with the Passion of His Son?

  In bed he was ready to take on the terror that took him out of his body, but he sensed that it would not come this night, was ebbing, driven back, perhaps retreating.

  He could even risk another test. ‘When I survey the wondrous cross,’ he sang, ‘on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.’ The sound! He knew that the choirmaster had been eyeing him for weeks. Sometimes he mimed - you could get away with that in a choir, for a while. He guessed that they were letting him stay until after Easter to keep up the numbers. After that he would be asked to leave, exiled in a way, only allowed back with a new deeper sound, a man’s sound. He had tried to duck the truth for a few months, but it was no longer possible. His voice had broken.

  Maybe there would be a miracle.

  To summon sleep he counted through the day, let his mind drift, saw Lizzie, Lizzie lying across, Lizzie strongly straddling, Lizzie on the fine young horse. Her long hair loose over her face as she leaned down to whisper in its ear. It was Lizzie who was more like the woman at the foot of the cross, he thought. Of course it was. Her arms embracing his feet, bleeding from the nails.

  He reached down in the dark, turned on the wireless, scanned the stations with the tuner, searched for music that would take him safely out of himself, possess him body and spirit.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They were behind the bar, the two of them, father and son. Sam enjoyed the feel of it, working together. Work as a boy with his own father had often been cold, founded on necessity, hard. There was give here. Joe was on his knees, wiping and regimenting the bottles on the half-hidden shelves, labels to the front, daily filled, daily drained; Sam was pulling fresh water through the pumps, twice weekly, purifying the passage of the beer. Sadie, in the darts room with Ellen, was singing to herself; Sam realised he had missed her. Busy, the four of them, preparing the old trade of hospitality, cleaning, burnishing, the polished bar glossy under the morning sun, a few dust motes freckling the space before the window frame. Outside the town too was about its work and Sam experienced the rare realisation that in this moment, these moments, he could count himself happy.

  ‘If you don’t go to communion at Easter,’ Joe said, you won’t be saved, you know.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Sam kept a straight face.

  ‘The vicar. You have to partake of the body and blood of Christ especially now when He’s being crucified and resurrected.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can manage.’ He wanted to dampen the boy’s excessive ardour.

  ‘No you won’t,’ Joe’s tone was matter of fact. He put the dark bottles of Guinness in neat lines, a dozen a line. ‘It’s one of our busiest times of year.’

  ‘What does that count against spending eternity in Hell?’ Joe did not look up. He meant it. As he spoke it he imagined it and felt it and saw Ellen and Sam in the perpetual flames, tortured by demons, forever lost. He too might be lost, he knew that, often he felt there was no hope for him but at least he had not given up. He had to try to save them.

  ‘You’ve just given up, haven’t you? How could you?’

  Sam checked himself and took it seriously. The boy’s tone moved him more than the words.

  ‘I’ve got my own religion, Joe,’ he said. Like his son he did not let the talk stop his work.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a private matter,’ Sam said, eventually, truthfully, ‘between me and myself. Maybe when we’ve got some time, when you’re a bit older …’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t go.’ The boy sounded desolate.

  He piled three empty wooden crates one on top of the other and steered himself out of the bar and back down the cellar. Sam turned to look at him after he had passed by, saw the back tensed at the over-ambitious load, saw the remains of the boil on the open-collared neck, wanted to say more.

  What was his own religion? Before the war, going to church had been relaxed, acceptable. Since his return, the idea of organised praying and singing,
ordered responses, communal confessions and credos, had seemed altogether foreign, a strange even an alien thing and he recollected with puzzlement that once and not long ago he had fitted in with its ways and meanings in such a docile manner, never as fundamentalist as Joe, but he would have nodded at being asked if he were a believer. His religion now? Something about sharing a cigarette before or after an encounter with the Japs, or securing an interval of solitude out there to lie flat on his back and look at stars, or feeling a blood surge of unnameable affection for the men walking into certain danger beside him.

  But what did that add up to? Hell - he could say, though only to himself - he had seen something of: Hell in those children bayoneted, strapped with barbed wire onto trunks of trees, left hanging there by the Japs as an example, that and the gut spillage from slaughtered men, sights more hellish than any Hell described in scripture, he thought. Heaven he could not fathom. The best he could do was to think of it as one of those moments of recognised happiness frozen for ever: like Joe and himself in the bar just then.

  He looked in the bucket. The water was clear. He swilled it away and opened a fresh packet of cigarettes. In the war the Sally Army always turned up with cigarettes - why did the Salvation Army come into his mind? He leaned on the counter, pretending to look out. Joe? Softly.

  ‘There’s thousands going to Glasgow from Carlisle.’ Sadie held a tin of polish and rags. Small mahogany tables glittered around her, dust had been vanquished from leatherette seats, work nearly done. Ellen was wiping down the scoreboard, rearranging the sticks of chalk, taking more time than the job deserved to be with Sadie on her maiden morning. ‘Billy Graham would be the boy for me if I wasn’t what I am.’

  ‘Can Catholics never change?’

  ‘No fear.’ Sadie wiped the last gloss on the table. ‘Not even a bad ‘un like me. They keep tight hold of the lot of us. But that Billy Graham.’ She struck a pose, extended her arms, dustcloths in both fists. ‘If you believe, come to Christ. Come and be saved.’ Her American accent was strong. ‘And they all do, don’t they? Marching up - Come to Christ! Here’s Joe!’ She put the cloths on the table, wiped her hands on the long pinny and said-sang, ‘Cha cha. Cha-cha-cha. Come on, Joe. Take your specs off. You can’t cha-cha-cha in specs.’

  She sashayed towards him and the boy took her in his arms. He was just taller than Sadie now and so he could lead without feeling patronised. Sadie brought in all the new dances: Ellen had taught him the old.

  ‘One, two, hitch, pause, one-two-three - and cha cha, stop a bit -cha-cha-cha - swivel your hips, see, like this, like film stars the way they wiggle their bums, cha cha cha-cha-cha…’ Criss-crossing in the narrow room, its eight feet of rubber matting marking out the compulsory distance from the darts board. ‘Swivel your hips!’ Sadie cried. ‘It’s Latin-American!’

  Joe thought he might be getting the hang of it when Ellen left the room. He had to follow her. She had gone into the kitchen.

  ‘Have you decided then?’

  ‘Oh Joe, I’m busy.’

  ‘You said you would make up your mind nearer the time. It can’t be much nearer.’

  He pointed to the wall clock which was crested by the carving of a rearing stallion. ‘Five past eleven.’

  ‘I can tell the clock!’

  ‘Well? If you can’t make communion on Sunday because - why can’t you?’

  His tone, his persistence, wearied Ellen yet she did not know whether her truer feeling was to send him packing or to be moved that he so desperately wanted to save her.

  ‘Because Saturday’s so busy and there’s always such a mess to clear up on Sundays - you know that, Joe, you know that. Sundays are our hardest mornings. You know that.’

  He did not reveal his agreement but he recognised the truth of what had been said.

  ‘But not even once. Just this once.’

  ‘Joe. Please.’

  ‘Well, today then. Sometime, any time, the vicar says people’s supposed to just pop in and out between twelve and three, only some of us have to be there all the time - can’t you just come for half an hour? Or an hour would be better.’

  ‘I’ll try.’ Ellen saw a film of relief appear on his expression. So more firmly she said, ‘I really will try my best.’

  ‘If you can just pop in and out,’ Sam said, at the door, standing behind Joe, ‘why don’t you pop out at two o’clock?’ he suggested to Joe. ‘We’ll be closing then - I’ll take you down to see Carlisle.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘They’ll be fighting for a win. Tranmere’s a good side.’

  ‘I can’t, Dad.’ To turn down the temptation of a football match and with his dad! That had to count. ‘I won’t push it.’

  Sam was not wholly successful in keeping the disappointment out of his voice. The idea had just come to him and felt perfect for both of them - a treat, an exclusive time, just the two of them. He left; Ellen went into the back kitchen; Joe was alone.

  ‘I’m Ready, Willing, and Able.’ Sadie’s voice was a call to arms.

  Joe went upstairs for a final prayer before the service.

  The day was quieter than a Sunday. Even the smattering who came out of the meagrely patronised pubs looked around, taking care on this day. Muffled bells from St. Mary’s Anglican Church, muffled from St. Cuthbert’s Roman Catholic, silence at Nonconformist Congregational, Methodist, Primitive, Quaker and the others, as Wigton’s religious sects called in their flocks, and they came, singly or in small family groups, steadily, walking the twisting alleys and narrow streets to contemplate the crucifixion of a young Jewish teacher whom many truly believed had become divine, through this death pointing the way to life everlasting for all those who sinned no more.

  Joe had not reckoned on being part of the congregation. Only the vicar was in his usual place. Joe sat between Edward and Alan as he did in the choir, but this time no whispering, no noughts and crosses, no singing messages to the tune of the hymns. No hymns, neither psalms nor anthems; no music at all. People just knelt or they sat. The three friends knelt. Joe noticed that across the nave Alfred, with his mother and sisters, was sitting. But sitting very still. He beat his twenty-five-minute record but then he had to get up: cramp and showing off. Alan and Edward had given up earlier. So they sat and, intermittently, Joe did manage to find a few seconds here and there to be steady in seeing Christ on the cross, the sun covered over, the piteous cry to His Heavenly Father, the sponge of vinegar pushed in His face, the Roman’s wounding sword, the taunts, the eternal shame of Judas, the lesser shame of Peter, John the favourite comforting Mary His mother at the foot of the cross.

  The three hours went very slowly. Many times he thought his watch might have gone wrong, sitting became as uneasy as kneeling, so once more he knelt, but only Edward came down with him and they did not stay for long.

  From time to time the vicar stood and read, or just talked. He told the story as it had happened at just this time on just this day. Joe prayed that he was taking it all in.

  He liked Joseph of Arimathaea who let the body of Christ be put in his unused tomb, or was it a sepulchre? The words ‘Arimathaea’ and ‘sepulchre’ - a cave made into the rock, the vicar said - took him into a dream somehow to do with Sinbad and Aladdin, but it was the name, Joseph, his own, which allowed him pride in a sometimes burdensome connection. Joseph and his coat of many colours, Joseph the husband of Mary - it was a name to live up to. He was glad people called him Joe.

  He was almost too stiff to stand when the vicar made a final deep bow to the altar and walked, black-cassocked, no other redeeming robes, head bowed and very deliberately not to the vestry but the length of the nave, making straight for the west door to stand between the two urns of daffodils where everyone would have to pass him on their way out.

  The choir boys had been told they must be the last to leave in case any help was needed. It was difficult to think what it was you were supposed to be thinking now He was finally dead on the cross. Eventually Edward’s father
waved them on.

  The vicar was outside the church, a few of the congregation still there, unwilling yet to quit the pull of the church or dawdling with intent. Joe was embarrassed to see that the vicar was talking to his mother. Although he could not have defined it, he could tell that she was not at ease, wishing she was not in such conspicuous company. The boy’s embarrassment was, in its first flush, so intense that he turned away and saw, at the corner gate, that the vicar’s wife was talking to Edward’s mother. He knew the vicar’s wife disapproved of him, had done since he had gone to that tea at the vicarage when the vicar had told him he would never make a server at the altar. So his look, though brief, was keen. He was sure Edward’s mother was almost crying or trying not to cry, he could not tell. The vicar’s wife stood well apart from her, head back, her hands in the pockets of her coat, looking severe. Then Edward’s mother turned away, ran through the gate, ran like a girl into Proctor’s Row and only slowed to a walk when she was well distant. It was the wrong way for her to get home, Joe thought. The vicar’s wife waited. Her husband had his back to her. Joe felt that he had to join his mother.

  ‘Well, Joe,’ the vicar’s smile was unusually warm. ‘You were very good. I had my eye on you. The Church needs disciples like you and we are lucky to have them.’

  Ellen smiled stiffly. She had still not forgiven the man for turning Joe down as a server and she never would. The boy had been heartbroken. Joe was confused by this praise.

  ‘Billy Graham gets thousands of disciples,’ he said, diluting and deflecting the compliment.

  ‘Billy Graham’s way is not our way.’ And Joe’s timid flicker of gratitude was snuffed out.

  Ellen, who like others had drunk in all that had gone on between the two women while having quite enough left over to cope with the vicar’s convenient manoeuvre of conversation, nodded across his shoulder to indicate the solitary figure at the small side gate. His face tightened but he turned away and all but marched across to his wife.