Crossing the Lines

by Melvyn Bragg

  ‘The Roman Cavalry used to be there,’ Joe said, to break the silence: he spoke with considerable local pride - look, this is what Wigton has behind it. A thousand of them. Crack troops, Mr. Braddock said - ready to go up to the Roman Wall or down to the coast to get the Picts. There’s a theatre there, under that grass - he showed us an aerial photograph - there’s temples, and stables, even baths: it was a smart spot then.’

  Alistair, who like his brother Speed would have been far more at home in the Roman world of sword and shield, of face to face combat, of naked courage, than in a world where technology was making such warrior virtues obsolescent, gave it about two seconds of his consideration and said,

  ‘What I want is a bit of legover, Joe.’

  Joe’s throat went dry.

  ‘I need dosh,’ he said, stopped in his tracks and turned to face the younger boy. ‘Shekels. This jacket - not full drape but there isn’t one like it in Wigton. But no drainpipes, no bootlace tie - not that they’d know the difference here!’ He smoothed back his hair with the palms of his hands. ‘D.A. coming on, still a bit short. But I need dosh.’

  The boy’s obliging, earnest mind raced to help.

  ‘Dad might need somebody else to wait on.’

  ‘Real dosh. Teddy Boys spend hundreds. Hundreds! The real cases. The Rock and Roll lads down in London.’ He grinned. ‘Know what Rock ‘n’ Roll means, Joe?’

  ‘Music? Bill Haley?’

  Shaking his head and still grinning, Alistair had made a circle of the thumb and index finger of his left hand and was energetically poking his right index finger in and out of it. Joe looked on rather mystified.

  ‘In - out. In - out, in - out - Rock ‘n’ Roll - get it?’

  Suddenly, Joe got it. For a moment he felt as he had done a year ago when the prefect in charge of his table in the canteen had informed all six younger boys that everybody’s mother and father ‘did it’. Joe had dissolved in disbelief and tremulously mounted a defence based on Eve having millions of eggs inside eggs inside her insides.

  ‘Lads would dance with lads,’ he said. ‘Some lads where I’ve been at. To teach you Rock ‘n’ Roll. Big City lads.’

  Alistair suddenly resumed his rapid pace.

  ‘Scottish lassies is the best when their husbands is away in the forces,’ he said. ‘I’ve met lads in the building trade, thirty bob for their keep, another ten bob and marriage rights - the lot - thrown in.’

  Joe nodded, trying to keep up. What marriage rights? What was ‘the lot’?

  ‘Always carry a French letter,’ Alistair said, and produced an example from deep in the drape pocket of his jacket. ‘Two if you’re feeling lucky.’ Eyes front, on they walked, wheeling right to Red Dial, onto the road the cavalry had once taken to patrol the Empire’s furthest border. The Four “F”s, Joe. Find ‘em, Feel ‘em, Fuck ‘em and Forget ‘em.’ Joe’s throat was dry. He was dizzy from this battering. He began to watch the bounce of the front tuft. If she gives it to you first time, she’s a tart. If she holds back, she’s a bitch.’ On he strode: Alistair was angry now, another right turn wheel and back on track for the town, Highmoor Bell Tower to guide them in. ‘Never admit responsibility. If she’s let you at her there’s been others at her before.’ What did this mean? At her what? ‘It’s when she starts playing with your old man that the fun starts, Joe.’ What fun? What sort of playing? But he wanted this. Another bounce; how did it stay like that? The boy was adrift. ‘There’s only one woman worth fighting for, Joe - that’s your mother. You have a beautiful mother. Remember it was me what told you that.’ Up the final hill into the town. ‘You can swing for your mother,’ he concluded and waved Joe goodbye as he slewed into the Brindlefield Estate to which some of his childhood friends from Water Street had been transplanted in the recent old town clearances.

  Joe reeled slowly down Southend Road, thoughtful, scattered in confused lusts, believing he was now much older.

  He wanted to look like Alistair.

  In the bathroom, he dipped freely in his dad’s Brylcreem and attempted to mould his school haircut, with the regulation parting on the left, into a D.A. Sides swept back: the heap on top just tumbling down a touch onto the forehead, the back converging like a duck’s… He found it difficult to swear even to himself in his own house. His mother was very hard on it.

  The hair was reluctant to abandon the school regulation but Joe tried, mixed soap and water to thicken the texture, found some Vaseline and rubbed that in, lost himself in the doomed effort at transformation.

  ‘Fancy yourself?’

  His mother had come into the bathroom. He feared that she had been there for some time. He blushed at being caught red-handed, preparing to show off. His self-confidence crawled into a miserable corner and curled up. His mother could always strip him down. Had she watched him twirl his fingers in the front bit to get the tumble effect?

  ‘You’re pleasant-looking, Joe,’ she spoke calmly, even normally, he noticed. ‘Nothing more. Run across and tell Colin we have to go: it’s nearly quarter to two.’

  Maybe this would wipe out the offence.

  ‘Tell her,’ Colin said, trying to drawl, holding his cigarette in a new dandified way, ‘I’ll come if and when I’m good and ready and not a minute before. If and when. Got it?’

  Joe reported verbatim. It was an answer guaranteed to upset her.

  ‘We have to set off now.’ Mr. Hawesley took his lightweight pipe out of his mouth to smile more becomingly.

  ‘Go without him,’ said Sam, who was on the steps waiting to witness the departure.

  ‘Maybe I should run across and try to persuade him.’

  ‘That’ll make his day.’

  ‘We really must set off, Ellen.’

  Ellen looked from Sam to Joe, across the hill to the home of Colin, then to Mr. Hawesley. The woman would be waiting for her at the graveside.

  ‘Tell him we waited,’ she said to Joe, who nodded.

  ‘I’ll look after her,’ Mr. Hawesley said to Sam as he held open the door for Ellen and offered her a blanket to tuck around her knees.

  Sam did not respond to that. He gave a nod to Ellen and went back into the pub before the small car pulled away.

  Joe ran up to the bathroom to try again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Please call me William,’ he said, when they were well on their way.

  Ellen’s discomfort at sitting so close to Mr. Hawesley was intensified by this request even though the Labour Party chairman had taken care to couch it in a neutral tone.

  ‘After all,’ he continued, filling the gap, ‘I call you Ellen.’

  The fairness of this explanation appealed to her but she knew that she would devise many ways to avoid calling him William.

  In thrall as he was, Mr. Hawesley knew he might have gone a little too far, but he had planned carefully to say that to her on this trip and at about this distance on the outward journey from Wigton. It had been put on his List For Today. Later, it could be ticked. But tread softly, he thought, softly … he must not escalate this further, not now, not for months, years, perhaps never. It was enough to be with her, side by side close in the shared little portable house steering carefully along the winding roads to Lancashire.

  ‘Do you like Paul Robeson?’

  Ellen nodded.

  ‘I’m referring to his singing,’ he said. ‘Although you can’t think about that without thinking about his acting and you can’t discuss his acting without reference to his politics. He is the whole man, I think, Paul Robeson. And being black, on top of it all! Racial discrimination is proof positive of the union of ignorance and prejudice. Paul Robeson settles all of that!’

  He did not seek out pauses intended for her contribution as Mr. Kneale did. That was a relief.

  ‘I heard him on the wireless this morning, singing Russian songs. I tell you, Ellen, the hair on my neck stood up - the feeling the man brings to those songs. Any man would want that strength of feeling. They are the songs of the
Russian people, Ellen, songs of resignation redeemed by the dignity of labour. I don’t mind telling you I stood stock still in the middle of the kitchen, a cup in one hand, the tea towel in the other, stock still while those songs went right through me … The power of true feeling, Ellen, feeling which is right for its time, that is irresistible, that is why it has this physical effect, strange though it seems, just a song can make the hair on your neck move and a sort of rush of goosepimples shiver over you and stop you right in your tracks.’

  As his confidence developed, the voice of this unimpressive, rather short man, spectacled, moustached like his hero Clement Attlee, recently removed brown trilby hat revealing an unbecoming red rim around his forehead, accreted authority and Ellen was drawn in by it.

  But the image which stuck was that of Mr. Hawesley in his kitchen, tea towel in one hand, cup in the other …

  Even before he had become a widower, Mr. Hawesley’s domesticity had been exceptional. Admittedly his wife had been bedridden for her last two or three years and described as ‘never a well woman’ but few men would so openly have done the shopping, puffing at the lightweight pipe as he considered his neat lists, and admitted to dusting and cleaning, washing, even ironing, even cooking. Yet there was about him something which checked derision. People recognised a decent man.

  Ellen could never see Sam doing woman’s work but her fairness made her attend to the other side of the scales - he worked hard enough at what he did and what was made they shared.

  Yet this man’s unselfconscious tea towel and cup lingered and she found it unaccountably touching.

  ‘I’ll be back in an hour and a half,’ he said, scrutinising his watch. ‘Three thirty-five,’ he said. ‘Just after five o’clock.’

  ‘I’ll be here,’ Ellen promised.

  ‘Till later then, Ellen.’

  The woman nodded, wincing that she so obviously resisted his too obvious attempt to bring out ‘William’.

  There was confetti around the church gate and on the path and Ellen smiled as at a sentimental secret. Weddings warmed her. No wedding in Wigton escaped her. Here, even on the way to her father’s grave, even with the imminence of a meeting with his wife, she paused to looked at the confetti, the dots of coloured paper peppering the slate-grey flagstones, fragile remains of the day’s showering of hopes. There was a penny lodged between flagstones, overlooked by the children who would have scurried to claim the throw of small change. She left it there, maybe it would bring luck.

  The grave was against the cold north wall of the churchyard but the cemetery itself had surprised her. Rather than the expected grimy Victorian graveyard of the industrial interred, she had found a pre-conquest church miles beyond the city in a village next to Morecambe Bay, with a view to the Lake District. For that alone she felt grateful to this woman she would meet.

  The woman was almost half an hour late.

  ‘You must be Ellen,’ she said. I would recognise that look anywhere,’

  Ellen took her hand and received a strong handshake.

  ‘You must call me Marjorie.’ The plump, rather fashionable woman, gloved, hatted, smartly fitted, dark blue two-piece suit, seen beneath the well-cut, unbuttoned tweed coat, ushered her to a nearby bench. It overlooked the Bay.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘People come here just for the sunsets.’ She took out a cigarette from a gold-looking case, offered, made no comment when Ellen shook her head, lit up, sighed out the first deep puff. ‘I got him in here because it was my church. I wanted somewhere nice for him. I grew up just over there.’ She waved the cigarette towards the village which crept up hesitantly from the shore to the lichened and salt-scoured little pinnacle of worship. ‘It’s a wonderful viewpoint.’

  Her handbag matched her shoes, Ellen noticed, and her purple silk neckscarf matched her gloves. Ellen felt lumpily underdressed.

  ‘Silly we haven’t met before, when you think,’ she said, looked carefully at Ellen and then added, suddenly thoughtful, with a switch of tone which made Ellen realise that the woman, Marjorie, was probably nervous too, ‘but that wouldn’t have been possible with him alive.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ellen’s firm voice took her by surprise.

  ‘God! You have such a look of him.’ Again she drew deeply on the useful cigarette. ‘Why not? He wanted to put it all behind him. At the same time,’ she threw the half-smoked cigarette away, unnipped, ‘he was obstinate.’

  Clearly it was Ellen’s turn but her mind was accelerating into turmoil already at the mass attack of impressions, information and speculation released by the arrival of this open, direct woman. To ease messages, then something would start up that he wouldn’t be able to cope with. And he thought you might not be able to cope with it either. That’s the best I can do.’

  Ellen nodded. Marjorie relented on her schedule, stayed for a few minutes more.

  ‘And Colin? Do you mind talking about him, Marjorie?’

  Ellen could sense, even see the woman shrinking away as the name was uttered. Her rather high-pitched, well-spoken voice grew harsh.

  ‘I should never have told him he was born before we got married. Some stupid - maybe I was getting back at your father - he wanted Colin to be kept in the dark - I don’t know what possessed me … I can’t understand that, Ellen, except to say I thought he would be bound to find out one day and better he found out from me. But it backfired! Believe me, it backfired, Ellen. Colin grabbed it, you see. It was his excuse. It was his great get-out. He wouldn’t let go of it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘We most likely won’t see each other again, Ellen, so I’ll tell you the truth. Your father could see this but I never put it into words.’ One more breath. ‘It got so I couldn’t stand him. My own son. So what sort of mother, what sort of woman does that make me? But I couldn’t. I tried, I pretended, I made up for it, I lied - but he could see through me. He said he was like an X-ray machine as far as I was concerned and he was right.’

  Ellen kept very still.

  ‘And Gerald, my new husband,’ she looked hard at Ellen, ‘I don’t know whether this is going to help you, but Colin won’t be any easier on you than he was on me - Gerald was - well, let’s put the best light on it we can - Gerald was very happy that Colin went his own way, and “kept his distance”, he said, after they’d had one or two brushes. I send him money, not much but about once a month. I’m lucky if I get a card.’ She puffed out her cheeks and expelled the air forcefully. ‘So there it is, Ellen. Some good, some bad. But life’s for the living. Gerald and I are off to Spain in June.’

  She stood up and held out her hand. This time the clasp was warm.

  ‘Life is for the living, Ellen,’ she repeated and glanced over to the grave. ‘You’ve made a very good job of it. Goodbye now.’

  Ellen watched her go across and lay a bunch of white trumpet lilies beside the daffodils brought by her. She stood there for a few moments, turned, gave Ellen a small, purple-gloved wave and then walked briskly to the lych-gate.

  Poor Colin, Ellen thought. Poor Colin.

  But that was only one of the thoughts which thronged in her mind, an inrush of questions, answers, insights, longings for more. Had he really thought so deeply about her? Why had he let Colin be born - like that? Starved himself? ‘He was mine. I knew how to keep him.’ She could always write to Marjorie and ask for another meeting. She must be quite rich. Brought money to the table. Why didn’t he come back to see them? Her poor mother, waiting, abandoned, in full public view and forced to hide in Grace and Leonard’s house where she skivvied as Ellen had done as a child and been grateful for the refuge as Ellen still was. Did it kill her mother young? Ellen was now older than her mother had been at her death.

  William opened her door and helped her out. She stood outside the Blackamoor, uncertain of everything. ‘I’ve been rather quiet.’

  ‘You’ve been totally silent, Ellen,’ he smiled, ‘but I understand.’ He did not know about Marjorie. ‘There are some things in life which demand all we
can give to them.’

  With some effort she imagined the life of giving endured by the man before her as his wife perished slowly and painfully before his eyes.

  ‘I’ve been a bit selfish,’ she said.

  ‘You couldn’t be selfish if you tried.’

  ‘I’d best go in, Mr. Hawesley. I’m late as it is.’

  ‘But of course. And any time, Ellen, any time. And it’s William.’

  He watched her until she was well inside the pub, just beginning to throb with Saturday business. She goes in to life, he thought, as he got back into the car, she encounters it and deals with it, and I go to an empty house, cold now, boiled eggs and toast. He indulged in an uncharacteristic burst of speed past St. Cuthbert’s, where young Sister Philomena was spread-eagled on the floor, not in Wigton, not even in Cork, but in Jerusalem outside the sealed sepulchre of her Lord and bridegroom, exalted, ecstatic.

  It had been a good day, he decided, as he went into the house and turned on both bars of the electric fire in the old sitting room, now his study. He knew her so much better from feeling her grief on the way home. Such depth of grief: such depth of feeling, he thought, and wondered at the quality of her. He did not take off his coat until he had made his supper, which he brought to the fire, set the tray on his knees, turned on the wireless to wait for the news, took his time over the choice of book he would read. There was always reading to soothe the pain of it. He decided on Antic Hay.

  After Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Joe and Alan walked the two sisters to their home on Greenacres. They had tried before and failed. Now they struck lucky. Alan was reluctant: he had received a message that Edna had picked him but immediately afterwards she had been taken off into the country with Edward and his mother. Alan did not want rumour of this escorting of the sisters to damage his chances with Edna, so he tried to keep a distance from his one: Joe tried to get as close as possible to his.