by Melvyn Bragg
He felt Malcolm thought he was better than him.
‘I can’t see the point of doing History,’ Malcolm said. I mean, it’s O.K. seeing things - castles, cathedrals, stately homes - but that’s buildings - engineering like this Wall - my dad says the Romans were the greatest engineers before the Germans - but History! As a subject. It isn’t even hard. I did hardly any swotting for O levels and got just as good marks as Joe.’
To whom he turned. Joe was stumped. The others around the back seat in the old coach were impressed. Joe usually came back with something.
‘Science is what’s important.’ Malcolm was Maths, Physics and Chemistry. ‘And Science is hard. You can’t flannel in Science.’
‘You can’t flannel in History,’ said Joe. ‘How can you flannel about dates? How can you flannel about causes of wars? How can you flannel about religious persecution?’
‘I flannelled in my O levels,’ Malcolm said, coldly, ‘and I got the same as you.’
‘It’s different in the Sixth.’ But Joe knew it was a weak argument.
‘This is the age of the Sputnik,’ said Malcolm. Veronica was kneeling on the seat in front of him, the ponytail bobbing as she nodded. Veronica’s always easy to impress, Joe thought. ‘What does History matter when we’re off to other planets?’
‘You’ll always want to know where you came from,’ said Joe. ‘You’ll always want to know how you got to be the way you are now.’
‘You don’t have to do it in the Sixth to find that out.’
‘Surely it’s simple enough,’ said Brenda, who had come to the now-crowded back of the bus to sort things out; and besides, she and Malcolm were friends, their parents were friends, they played bridge together, people expected the two of them to click one day. ‘History tells us what our past was, Science tells us what our future might be. You need both.’
Malcolm smiled at her. She did look good out of uniform.
‘Science tells us about the past as well,’ he said. ‘Look at the history of the universe. Only Science can tell us about that. Or evolution, that’s Science. D.N.A., that’s Science. Geology, that’s Science. Medicine, Science. How you got here’s just the easy part.’
Brenda returned Malcolm’s smile. It was as if they were a Freemasonry of two. But she did not like to be argued down, not even by Malcolm.
‘Many of those subjects are part of History anyway,’ she said. ‘And if you think it’s easy, it’s not. Maths was easy. I got the same marks as you.’
‘History,’ said Joe, taking care, ‘tells you the most important things of all. It tells you how people lived, it tells you how religion mattered to them and how they fought for liberty and that; you learn about conditions not just of the rich but the poor and how they can be changed and how thinking improved, that’s History as well, it’s to do with what we’re all made of. That’s why it’s worth it.’
‘I’ll sign up for that,’ said Mr. Braddock. He gave the briefest of nods to Joe, a Morse blink, a darted compliment to the boy who would nurse it. ‘Prepare to land,’ he said. ‘Housesteads awaits.’
Joe was not the only one initially disappointed. He had expected a mighty wall, something on the scale of the photographs he had seen of the Great Wall of China. He had been promised an excavated camp and anticipated amphitheatres, a forum, temples, avenues - instead of which there was a network of ruins never more than two or three feet high, with stumps of columns, mown grass and small detailed signs, the whole looking forlorn under the damp sky. And no Wall in sight. Mr. Braddock gathered the two dozen volunteers about him and knew their sense of anticlimax.
‘You have to use your imaginations,’ he said. ‘That’s something we simple historians try to develop,’ he beamed at Malcolm. ‘And so think of this place, on a wet day like this, nearly two thousand years ago, great thick walls, here; splendid columns, sixteen of them, over there; hundreds of horses and chariots, footsoldiers slogging up to the Wall and back on guard duty, many of them hundreds of miles from home in warmer climes, the womenfolk in the kitchens and some of the senior wives with their music and their own little courts, locals conscripted into the army itself and all sorts of camp followers. Imagine this place on this hillside looking down to the road there that goes seventy-odd miles from Wallsend in the east to the Cumbrian coast on the west, and beyond that road there is another ditch and beyond that another mound, deep defences constantly under repair, the whole place seething! And think of it when they might have been under attack from the Picts to the north, with the orders flying out, the brilliantly organised Romans falling into battle order, the wild screaming of the barbarians from over there …’ Mr. Braddock pumped away and Joe for one was helped to the enchanted chimera of the past, encouraged to believe that he could indeed feel what it was like to be alive then, experience the sounds, the fear of the enemy, the resolution to face them. From the small academically reconstructed piles of underfunded ruins grew a settlement fit for warriors.
‘And we see here the final line drawn around a great Empire.’
Ours was miles bigger,’ Joe said. ‘And miles better.’
‘That’s another question. Let’s go and look at the Wall itself.’
The schoolteacher smiled to himself as he led his little army up towards the clump of firs beyond which was one of the most spectacular runs of the Wall, cresting what seemed a frozen cliff wave of rock, clinging to its steep contours. Joe’s patriotism pleased him. Mr. Braddock had emerged from the war with one credo intact -his belief in the superiority of the English, especially the decent Englishman. He had seen much to disturb child-taught beliefs about the nobility of his countrymen. But the History teacher was a relativist and from his own experience he still believed that the Englishman, by whom in some absolutely clear but inexplicable way he meant most of those who lived in Britain as well as Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians and some sections of other colonies - who were admittedly different but all also really ‘us’ - Englishmen had indeed created an Empire ‘miles bigger’ and, yes, ‘miles better’ than any other. They had taken all the Roman virtues and humanised them.
They had held onto that amazing Celtic mad courage which had so impressed Caesar. And they had taken on the torch of liberty and democracy from Greece. That was the basis of it - conquests, colonisation, were a bonus.
As he led the young troops over fields which must have prepared for so many wars, he rehearsed what he would tell them in the talk scheduled for the end of the morning. He would say that war not only tested individuals - their bravery, their selflessness, revealing unexpected cowardice, unanticipated heroism - but also nations. Look at Europe as the prospect of a Second World War had grown more certain. Germany completely gone, lost its head, lost its soul; Italy following on, tinpot; Greece, Spain and Portugal almost as bad; France shaming its great history; Russia a new authoritarianism; Sweden and Switzerland pretending to be neutral but arms open to the fascists; Ireland on the side of England’s enemies as usual; Eastern Europe in Stalin’s shadow; only Britain and the core of that, England, with the combination of moral courage, will and force to stand up to brutal tyranny, to fight for decency and liberty. Despite all faults, all failings, it had stood alone and in the greatest danger until Hitler had fatally turned on Russia and then America had piled in. He would tell them all that. They must know the best of their country. And America, the teacher would say, despite its many immigrants from all over Europe, had still built itself on the ground cleared by the Pilgrim Fathers with the language of the King James Bible and in fruitful opposition to the English Crown. He wanted them to be proud of what England had done, especially as this Suez shilly-shallying made him uneasy over its future.
‘You’ve been divided into six teams of four,’ he said, after they had recovered their breath and, he hoped, taken in the awesome nature of this dramatic fortification. I’ve drawn up a list of questions. I want you outside the Museum at twelve-thirty prompt.’
Later, after they had eaten their san
dwiches and been driven down to Hexham for a brisk tour of the Abbey, they were given a free hour to walk around the quaint streets of the ancient Christian market town. Joe peeled back to the Abbey. He did not quite know why but he wanted to be alone there. The way the worn steps swept down into the church had stirred his imagination.
He sat in a pew in the middle and let the place seep into him. It was as if he had trained himself by that testing of himself when he had stopped in those walks and faced the order outside and the disorder inside his head. Soon in the cool near-empty Abbey he felt wrapped around with the sense he sought for, of a world of devotion, of monks rising in the middle of the night and padding down those broad shallow stone steps from their dormitories into the choir to celebrate and commemorate their faith. Just as on the Wall gazing north he had seen himself as a centurion alert to the next attack, his forces well deployed, his own sword arm ready, so here he let the present dim down and in a fragmentary but felt way, he lowered himself into the past, finding in it a dreamlike satisfaction, a simpler, other, achieved life.
The tap on his shoulder made him turn sharply. ‘Time to go,’ said Mr. Braddock.
Joe stood up rather slowly as if he were tired. He was silent as they walked towards the bus.
‘That essay of yours on the Dissolution of the Monasteries,’ the teacher said.
Joe waited.
‘Best you’ve done, I think. Straight alpha.’ Joe’s first. The boy looked at him. The man looked away. On the bus in the dark after very few minutes the cocktail of good fortune which had come Joe’s way on that day and over the previous few weeks would not be denied. He began another sing-song, this time with a fair imitation of ‘Walking in the Rain’. Brenda, who had a good bluesy voice, sang ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ and ‘Motherless Child’. Malcolm did ‘The Ying-Tong Song’. Mr. Braddock set them off with ‘Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag’ and ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’. Joe attempted ‘Houn’ Dog’ but that was hard solo and Malcolm sniggered. Some cheered. They were in the mood now as the unlit coach sang on along the Roman road and Mr. Braddock remembered there might be a bottle of light ale somewhere in the pantry.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Diddler came to collect Joe just after seven. Sam had let him off his Saturday morning work and there was no rugby match. Joe was not too old to dismiss a ride on the flat cart and they trotted briskly through the near-deserted streets of the old town and out beyond the river.
‘They put barbed wire across the end of that road in the war,’ Diddler said. ‘To stop the Germans getting to the park,’ He shook his head and then spat, the usual controlled jet. He flicked the reins to gee-up the piebald which galloped up the steady incline towards Pot Metal Bridge. ‘Look at him, Joe,’ He grinned widely at the rump of the horse. ‘Where’s his like? Not in this town.’ The gallop jostled the bundle of old blanket. Joe saw the gun which gave him a jolt of pleasure.
He slowed the horse down to a walk when they turned into the lane, a rutted mediaeval way leading eventually to a neglected farm, run down over decades by the ageing brother and sister who had inherited it. Along the way was a huddle of poor rented cottages, one of which housed John, one of Joe’s old gang, now an apprentice at the factory. It was at his house that the hunt met.
Joe had never been on one of these sweeps through the country side. He had not realised there would be so many there. Six men including Matt who kept a tame fox and John’s father in his most valued possession - a poacher’s jacket handed on just after the war. All the men had guns, .22s. Sandy Fletcher, a dog man, had an old twelve-bore. There were three lurchers, four terriers and, as Joe would see later, six ferrets currently deep-pocketed. The men stood among boys, about ten of them, sons, friends of sons, one or two, like Speed’s younger brother, magnetically attracted by the lure of the scavenge. There were sacks to be carried, bread for the day. John’s father counting heads, the small crowd impatient to be gone. Diddler put his horse out to grass in a lush field. Diddler had advised him to wear his wellingtons and wrap up warm. Most were scarved and booted save for Speed’s brother and his friend.
John handed Joe a stick, almost straight, about three feet long.
‘This is your skimmer,’ he said. He smiled in appreciation of Joe’s ignorance. John thought Joe was making a bad mistake. There he was, still stuck in school - what was the point? No money. No apprenticeship which would lead to a steady engineering job and security. If you wanted school, well, he was on day release once a week to Carlisle Tech. And paid for it! And he worked with men who could tell you useful things, not just teachers forever spouting what was no use to you.
‘It’s to break rabbits’ legs,’ he said. He made a space, swung and skimmed his own stick grass-top high. ‘When the ferrets have flushed them out and they make a bolt for it. Then you can just go and break its neck.’ Joe had never done that. ‘We got nearly three hundred last time. Last year. We got nearly half a ton of stuff.’
They swept through the country in a line using the long nets at the warrens, taking vegetables, eggs, thirty pigeons the year before, and two roe deer, everything edible, anything sellable, farms swift to check their poultry after the line had moved through, sacks squawking.
‘Stick by me,’ said Diddler. He pointed to Speed’s brother. I want you as well.’
The boy came over. He was bigger than both his brothers. Worked for the council, digging ditches.
‘Speed still in Malaya?’ Joe asked, to say something, to make a connection with the final fierce member of that family.
‘Still shooting folk, Joe,’ the boy said, smiling rather dreamily. ‘I get my papers in a fortnight. I hope there’s some left for me.’
They moved off. The long-haired ginger lurchers, lean, loose-limbed, something of the wild about them, something unbiddable, loped ahead like scouts. They spread out as they went past the neglected farm where the pickings were easy.
As the autumn lift of wind whipped his face and Joe gathered a sense of the coherent intention of what had seemed a rag tag and bobtail gaggle, a feeling of exhilaration began to grow. He was near the middle of a line widely spaced now, mowing purposefully through the fields, something of an army about it, the boy thought, and something piratical or like the Border Reivers Mr. Braddock had told them about after that trip to Housesteads. Sweeping through the country, living off the land, ‘back to the roots of war’, he had said.
As the boy settled into the line, safe between Diddler and Speed’s brother, he took more detailed stock of those about him.
There were men and boys who, since his days with Speed and his time in Water Street, he saw only at the edge of his daily Wigton round. Once the boys had been encountered nightly in games in the streets, gang battles, the robbery of orchards, building of bonfires, damming of the river, but now the increasing possession of the grammar school emphasised a distance, his difference, still at school way past working age. The men were generally from the poorer end of the town, not always steadily employed, some of them drinking away too much of what they earned. They were always with dogs, always with each other, perhaps the last of a deeply persistent tribe that had scavenged over centuries, now set to disappear from the landscape, local poachers, small-time dealers, near to the tinkers, whose camps at Black Tippo they would visit to trade, bake hedgehogs, pass the time with that old improvident, self-ruling nomadic group. They somehow panhandled a living from the shallow stream they stood in and yet, as they hunted and cleared the land, Joe felt grateful to be there, to be alongside men and boys who were so certain in the land itself, so dominating the land which would feed and please and profit them.
They put the long nets around a big warren. Joe was told to hold one end. They sent in the ferrets. ‘A rabbit can come out of one of three holes,’ John had told him, pleased to teach someone who had stayed on at school for nothing but teaching. ‘You have to cover the lot. The net is across the main holes. This,’ his skimmer was brandished, ‘is for the others,’
It was not a glorious posting, to stand just holding the net, but maybe he would graduate, Joe thought, maybe have a chance to use his skimmer. He looked across the plain towards the fells which rimmed the north of the Lake District and felt something grand in the reach and climb of the prospect before him, began to dream a little, Rachel that evening and at a dance, to be close to her, would they dim the lights for the last waltz? The line of Skiddaw cut clear in the cloudless autumn brightness, no thought of the fury in the earth as the ferrets attacked, the panic of the rabbits until the net went tight, and again, as out they came trapped, too terrified to turn back, blocked from going on, men and older boys walking along the net to break their necks with a swift stick lash. Joe felt his mind tremble between thrill and horror, that life could be so swiftly ended, that this was hunting, that he was allowed there at all.
At the end of the field they came across a rabbit, couched in the grass, shivering, eyes desperate, fixing him personally, Joe thought. Speed’s brother knelt down beside it and laid aside his stick. He rolled the rabbit over so that he could break its neck. He stiffened his hand, palm open, held the rabbit’s ears.
