Crossing the Lines

by Melvyn Bragg

  There were two races to go and he would have to bluff his way through. He seemed to meet everybody he had travelled with from Wigton, all of them asking, ‘How’s it going?’ His reply was, ‘Holding my own.’ As this was the reply habitually given it carried conviction, but he felt redundant - a gambler with no stake. Watching a race was nothing like watching a race when you had a bet on it. He kept away from Henry Allen’s board.

  ‘Long face, Sam.’ Diddler was rather bleary-eyed but steady on his feet. ‘Given it all to the bookies?’

  There was long intimacy with Diddler.

  ‘I’m skint.’

  ‘With two to go. Bad job.’

  The tinker pulled some notes out of his trouser pockets. ‘Can’t see a man from Vinegar Hill skint with two races to go, Sam.’

  He licked his thumb.

  ‘One for you. One for me. Yours. Mine. Sam’s. Diddler’s.’

  ‘This’ll do, Diddler.’

  ‘We’ll split the lot, Sam. Not far to go. Yours. Mine. And again. I’m told Bold Simon’s been saved for this one, Sam. But there’s a fella from Newcastle I have to see first.’

  Sam smiled to himself as Diddler lumbered away, cutting off all chance of thanks and by his swift departure courteously ensuring that the younger man did not give offence by promising to pay the money back.

  ‘It’s a gift,’ said Sam, watching him nose through the open-necked sunny crowd.

  It was about this time in the afternoon that the first serious rumours of Lizzie’s ordeal began to percolate into the town. There had been no gossip on the bus though one or two had been nudged by the first thin drizzle of comment, too little to go on, nothing to work on. But now, from that high new estate, Brindlefield, standing like an encampment to guard the town against the south, came the first whispers, door to door, pavement encounters, excited appalled rumours.

  ‘It’s Robert Carter.’ Sam’s naming spun the man around. ‘I was hoping I’d see you, Sam.’

  They shook hands and went over to sit on a couple of beer crates outside the big tent.

  ‘When was it last? Leeds?’

  ‘What a Test!’

  ‘Seven years. I thought I’d bump into you again. Up here,’ said Sam, and offered a cigarette to the man, once a comrade in arms in Burma. ‘Remember the Sally Army?’

  ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ Robert quoted as he reached out for one. Sam tried his best not to notice the frayed cuffs of the stained and shiny jacket. ‘I lost that job soon after you came down. In a dead-end hole now. So I thought, any sun on Easter Monday and I’ll off to Carlisle Races to bump into Sam.’

  Sam lit them both up. When Robert thrust his face forward, Sam saw all he needed to see in that blotched, glazed, flaking skin. Robert was on the booze, heavily.

  ‘Good day?’

  ‘Average.’ Robert looked away, a sudden self-consciousness possessing him which touched Sam.

  ‘Can’t be worse than mine. Tamburlaine’s going to retrieve my fortune.’

  ‘I’ll let this one go,’ said Robert. ‘You put on your bet. And wait for your winnings. I’m happy to stay here.’

  He wanted what money he had for drink, Sam knew, and didn’t look back as he went to the bookies so Robert wouldn’t think he was being spied on as he slipped into the beer tent.

  The horse was second but the each way bet meant that he had held his own and a little more, on the race if not on the day.

  'I have a busload with me,’ said Sam. ‘Why don’t you come back with us?’

  ‘I’ve a train to catch from Carlisle.’ Robert smiled, sadly, and pulled the last quarter from his pint. ‘We met up too late, Sam. Some other time.’

  But what other time would that be? And Robert’s first words had been that he was hoping to see him. Perhaps he had come from Leeds especially.

  ‘The bus goes through Carlisle,’ he said. I'll give you a lift down. We can have a drink or two and I’ll catch a service bus later.’

  ‘Don’t let me put you out, Sam.’

  ‘I can’t stay long. I don’t want Ellen on her own for too long.’

  ‘My train’s just after seven.’ It was a plea.

  They went to the large bar at the back of the Station Hotel. There was space enough for them to be isolated. Robert brought the two pints of bitter from the bar, and a whisky for himself.

  ‘Are you sure, Sam?’ He raised the whisky.

  ‘This is my limit, Robert. Good health!’ He raised the glass.

  ‘Good health.’ Robert threw back the whisky and took a good mouthful of the beer before he sat down. This time it was he who offered the cigarettes.

  As Robert tacked about the subject he might never reach, Sam reassured himself that the pub would be manageable for the first hour or two on an Easter Monday evening; coach trips would be out in force but with such sunny weather they would take the benefit and if the expected two or three stopped on Market Hill to give the trippers their last chance for a drink, it would be later in the evening. Joe could always help out. He waited for Robert to say what he had come to say.

  Sadie came across to bring the rumours to Ellen. She knew that Ellen had not intended to go out that afternoon, seemed relieved at the opportunity to be alone for a few hours. Joe had gone off on his bike somewhere as soon as the pub closed. It was only rumour, but Sadie was sure there was something in it. Three of them at her. Kept her prisoner. Infiltrating the town now, gathering pace, gathering material: they had brought others in, all of them were at her, they did things to that girl, there’ll be murder over this.

  It’s just somebody to talk to about it.’ Robert looked away. He was well into his third pint, second whisky downed. Sam, feeling rather prissy sticking to the one pint, excused as business, patient but caught looking at the clock. ‘Not so much answers.’ Still looking away. It still comes back to me, Sam. By now I thought it would have gone, nearly ten years, Sam, ten years but it’s like yesterday to me.’ He stubbed out a cigarette, immediately lit another and lowered his voice further, even though they had found a secluded spot. ‘Not just through the night. In the day. I remember things. That retreat when we couldn’t slow down, not even for our own. There was a lad walking on bits of tyres. I can still see his feet, Sam. You couldn’t call them feet - just big swollen things full of pus covered in sores, and the poor lad couldn’t walk, Sam. I tried to carry him a bit, but the Sergeant. He was under orders. Fair enough. Then he just peels off and falls down. I’m looking at him. Our lads go past trying not to look - who can blame them? Who? Not me. Then I’m told: move! And you know, Sam,’ his expression, weakened by drink, turned towards tears, you know, I thought best to shoot the lad there and then. Better than Tojo. Torture. Buried alive. Skin him. Head off last. I should’ve shot him, Sam. I should’ve done it. What happened to him, eh? What happened to him? We should have given the lad a grave, Sam. He was our own.’ Robert gave way to the tears and silently they irrigated the dry ruined skin of his face. ‘And there’s other things, Sam.’ He breathed in very deeply. His next words were spoken in a forced normal voice, almost rapped out. ‘Do you get that? Does it still bother you? Or is it just me that’s going crackers, Sam?’

  ‘I try to keep it in,’ said Sam.

  He wished Robert would stop.

  He did not want to think about it. The bayoneted children barbed-wire bound to the trees. Ian cradling his guts in his hands. Killing in mad fear-fury the Japs in that wood and the sudden flash of awful joy in the killing. He did not want to think about it. Self-consume the nightmares. They would come back harder again now. Ellen and Joe would feel his nightmares even though he said nothing. How much worse it would be if he talked. He wished Robert would stop. He listened.

  ‘Still the wife?’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘I never remarried. The kids just drifted away.’ He looked at the beer. ‘Can’t say I blame them.’

  ‘There’s a lot feel like you do,’ Sam offered. ‘I’m sure of that.’

  ‘Yes.’


  ‘Another?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The men stood side by side on the platform. The train was already in, a Races special.

  ‘I was always glad I saw young Neil Harvey make that century,’ Robert said.

  ‘The boy still talks about it, now and then.’

  ‘I’ll be on my way, then.’

  He held out his hand. They shook. Sam walked away.

  Almost exactly two years later, Sam received a letter from solicitors in Leeds. The message was brief. Robert Carter had died, sadly at his own hand. He had asked for this letter to be forwarded. Enclosed. ‘Dear Sam,’ he read,

  ‘It all got too much. I know it’s the coward’s way out but there’s nothing for me here. I’ve no hope in anything anywhere else either. The memories got worse, Sam, and there’s no living with them. Not for me. I wish I’d - no point in wishing now.

  ‘You were a good pal, Sam. Thanks for that. There are two photographs you might like to have. Maybe your boy will get something out of them. I like to think that a fond gaze will look on them and they’ll mean nothing to anybody else.

  ‘So long. Sorry.

  ‘Yours very sincerely

  Robert Carter’

  One photograph was of the football team in India. Both he and Robert had been in it. On the back, Robert had printed all the names.

  The other was just the two of them, in uniform, wearing their Bush hats. On the back it said: ‘Me with Sam Richardson, my pal, Burma 1945.’

  The first trip had arrived just before seven o’clock and about thirty people crashed into the Blackamoor for drinks, crisps, lavatories and cigarettes. Joe flew to Sadie for help. Even though the crowd was good-humoured and many happily sunburned from the day on the coast, there was impatience to be served and Ellen was struggling when William Hawesley arrived. He stood in the corridor gazing into the bar, relaxed, amused. Ellen felt that the lather she was in made her look like the red-faced flustered landlady in seaside comic postcards. William looked on her as a symbol of loveliness made more glorious by work.

  ‘Yes?’ She wrenched herself from the pumps, from the packed, singing crowd, keeping her eye on Joe coping valiantly with orders from the darts room and the kitchen. Sadie was at the sink.

  ‘I just thought I’d drop in,’ Mr. Hawesley said, in a well-prepared, easy, chatty tone, ‘to let you know that this being Easter Holiday Monday we won’t be holding our usual meeting here tonight’

  Ellen’s rather bewildered look was interpreted by him as lack of clarity.

  ‘The Labour Party meeting.’

  ‘Yes, I’d worked that out, Mr. Hawesley.’

  ‘So we’ll just skip that one.’ his voice had to rise: the trippers were launching into ‘Davy Crockett’.

  ‘That’s very good, nice, yes, Mr. Hawesley.’

  How could she get back into the bar? You could not turn your back on Mr. Hawesley and she had not the capacity to send him off.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Can I help? You seem very busy. I’m in no hurry. Can I help?’

  ‘You can wash up,’ Ellen spoke before she had thought about it. ‘Then Sadie could help Joe wait on in the other rooms.’

  ‘I’m good at washing up,’ said William.

  He walked into the bar and nodded when Ellen had the nerve to add,

  ‘We need the bottle glasses quickest.’

  For Sadie to wait on in the rooms was a dream at last fulfilled. Joe liked the speed and excitement of it, remembering a long list of orders, totting up the prices. Almost instantly the pressure was relieved and Ellen too began to enjoy this rush and push, this fervent outpouring of determined enjoyment, this furious spending of hoarded leisure and cash, this day out. But of all of them it was William who bloomed. Deft at the sink. Fast on the rinse. Meticulous with the tea towels. Made a bit of a show of it even. And still time to look around, feel he was part of the crowd, the heave of people, salt of the earth, singing, some even dancing in the corridor, ‘King of the Wild Frontier.’

  This was how Sam found it, but just moments after his arrival a whistle was blown, drinks were downed and the regiment of pleasure seekers made for the bus to travel to pastures new.

  ‘Don’t worry, Sam,’ William called out, popping in his unlit pipe for comfort, ‘all under control.’ He flapped the sopping wet tea towel. ‘Need another of these.’

  Ellen took care to avoid looking at Sam.

  ‘I met Robert, from Leeds,’ Sam’s tone was apologetic.

  ‘We managed very well,’ said Ellen and meant it.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to go now.’ Sadie made a play.

  ‘Sadie was a real help,’ Ellen said. ‘It was no trouble, was it, Sadie?’

  ‘As long as somebody does the adding up I’ll do it for buttons.’

  ‘Customers ahoy!’ William had spotted another coach tour swing onto the hill. ‘All hands on deck!’

  Ellen laughed. To this man it was like being let loose in a fairground. Perhaps it was.

  Once again the day trippers funnelled in through the door and thirty orders filled the pub with what William later described as ‘an exhilarating cacophony’. Sadie, who had hung around hopefully, seized her moment once more.

  Like all air going out of an antique organ, this trip soon drank up its twenty minutes’ break and left the pub near empty, near silent.

  ‘I could do this all night, me,’ said Sadie.

  ‘So could I!’ William’s endorsement was hearty, earnest, somehow funny.

  Again Ellen found herself smiling at this male, finding attractive his unfaked, almost boyish enthusiasm for what, to her, was a chore. The pub had closed. They were in the kitchen for the postscript of the day. Jack Ack had turned up for a drink and stayed to help. He was waiting to talk, Ellen sensed that, and she knew the reason: but he would not talk in front of the stranger William was to him. Sam, too, more open about it, was ready to welcome William’s departure. This was made impolitely clear, Ellen thought, and his expression brightened when William announced,

  ‘Well. I must be off.’

  Sam was on his feet.

  ‘I’ll see you to the door.’

  Goodnight, goodnight, thank you, goodnight.

  On the step William made an offer it was extremely difficult for Sam to refuse.

  I’d like to help more often,’ he said. On a Saturday. That’s your busy time, isn’t it? You can call on me on other nights. Just the washing-up. I know my place! It would release Ellen from a bit of drudgery and frankly, Sam, now I’m on my own I would enjoy it.’ He paused. Sam’s silence was taken to be consent. ‘No payment, Sam. Strictly friendly terms. We accountants are well enough off’ A second, and as it proved, a final pause with Sam unable to focus on a courteous, plausible, firm objection. And why should he object? ‘Being with the People,’ said William, and breathed in very deeply. ‘Well then.’ He held out his hand. Sam found that he had taken it. ‘And whenever Ellen wants to go down to her father’s grave, any weekend, I can easily fit it in. There’s so much time on my hands, since.’

  He put on his hat and walked across to his car. Sam watched him go, dissatisfied with his unease. He lit a cigarette before going back. He wanted to avoid sleep, avoid the consequences of Robert’s talk. He wanted Ellen.

  Jack Ack used Sam’s re-entry into the kitchen to let loose the news about Lizzie.

  ‘She looked as if she’d been run over.’ Sadie had added to her intelligence since last talking to Ellen and more than any of them she had picked up the whisperings in the pub.

  ‘I like Lizzie,’ Ellen was distressed. ‘It’s an awful thing. Are you sure?’ It was a plea for hope. There was a rush of memories of Lizzie in her earlier childhood; Lizzie collecting pebbles for ammunition for the boys’ stone fights; Lizzie trying to help Joe when the bigger boys set on him after their move to Water Street; Lizzie loud in infinite pride when they got a house on the new estate with an inside lavatory; Lizzie around the st
reets, the smile, the wave, the instant vital friendliness of Lizzie, the pinched face and thick plaits turning towards handsome, towards luxuriant, the just niceness of a girl from a big family who was taking life on and winning. She did not want to talk about it. And by men she knew. How could they? How could they do this thing?

  ‘They were all at her,’ Jack Ack said, excited despite his disgust that men he had worked with could do this.

  ‘Some say she egged them on!’ Sadie was affronted. ‘She wouldn’t do that, would she, Ellen?’

  ‘Oh no. No. Not Lizzie. She’s a good girl.’ Ellen felt short of breath as the certainty of what had happened now forced her to imagine it. She wished they would stop. ‘Joe. It’s past your bedtime.’

  He had hoped that by keeping very very quiet and not moving -'Now!’

  The boy walked out slowly, accompanied by silence, as if he were in disgrace.

  ‘They know who it was, then?’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell.’ Sadie, who was experiencing all this to the point of acting a part in it, spoke defiantly, proud that the girl had not split despite everything. ‘But they know who it was. We all know them.’

  ‘They denied it. They’ve denied it all day.’

  ‘Like St. Peter,’ said Sadie.

  ‘Where did Kathleen think she’d got to?’

  ‘Sometimes she’ll stay at Jean’s house.’ Sadie had almost the complete version of the timetable. ‘So she didn’t bother till about dinner time. Sean is on the morning shift.’

  ‘When he got home he went on the warpath.’

  ‘Lizzie, though.’ Ellen did not want more story. She was increasingly upset by thoughts of Lizzie and those men, that great dark house, the girl who always gave her a smile and a wave in the street. Something in her pulled away from all of them. She felt cold. Tm going to bed,’ she said, abruptly.

  Joe heard her come upstairs but was too ashamed to call out. He wanted to hear more. All at her?

  Ellen lay at the edge of the bed, eyes clenched, wide awake. Sam undressed quickly, needing comfort, but she aped sleep when he reached out for her. He turned to his side of the bed. William was of no account, he told himself. In what state was Robert now? He set himself against the memories. Ellen was too tense to be asleep. He knew that.