Crossing the Lines

by Melvyn Bragg

  He liked sonnets. It was a partiality which, like that for classical music, was kept strictly private. He had to study sonnets in Wordsworth who was one of the set books but he liked sonnets anyway. He liked their neatness. He liked the way they rhymed so easily. He liked the punch lines. He wrote love sonnets which he knew he ought to tear up but he kept in the old cash box which used to hold a collection of foreign coins. He wrote patriotic sonnets, local sonnets and cod sonnets. It was odd that although cod sonnets were the best fun to do they were never any good at all, whereas one or two of the others were plausible fakes. ‘Juvenilia,’ Mr. Tillotson called them when he submitted them for the school magazine. ‘But imitation is a tried and tested way to kick off. Save free verse for later, Richardson.’ Over his flat northern voice came a small gravelly chuckle.

  They had tea in the kitchen at five, the main meal of the day. Joe took time off until eight. Usually he went to see Rachel, even though the sabbatical possibilities for a young courting couple were very limited unless you were Chapel. Linda was Chapel, the soloist in a devoted choir. Rachel rarely went and then only to put in an hour or so. Her parents liked her to be in quite early on Sunday even though they were not religious and Rachel went along with that as did everyone else and what else was there to do except on the long light summer nights when strolling down to the Moss was the fashion. There was another fact about Sundays. On Sundays their rule was you touched nothing. Sometimes and always when it was raining, Joe would just go to the telephone box opposite the pub and talk for as long as the money held out.

  At eight o’clock his options were open. He could go across to see The Sunday Play with Mr. Kneale and his Uncle Leonard and Aunt Grace. Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Tennessee Williams - ‘All good stuff,’ Mr. Tillotson said, and useful too. Or he could read whatever he had on the go: currently it was Aldous Huxley, pressed on him by William. Later he would search the air for music.

  He set the alarm for seven-thirty every morning to put in half an hour’s dogged memorising of Virgil and Cicero.

  As long as he was working and keeping to a plan he could keep at bay the strong anxiety which threatened him. An anxiety which he feared. It was a force on its own, he thought, like Rumour in The Aeneid. It was close to fear. Perhaps it was fear. That he would fail. And then? There was nothing on the other side. If he failed, he fused.

  The other day Mr. Tillotson had reminisced about his university days and told them of the trials of learning Anglo-Saxon. But the story of Beowulf had gripped him and he re-told it sufficiently well to his small Wigton flock for Beowulf the warrior man and Grendel the dragon monster to dig themselves into Joe’s imagination. To help himself he thought that Grendel was like his fear, loping in at night looking for blood, looking for lives to end, bodies to gobble up. But Beowulf destroyed Grendel in the end. He would be Beowulf.

  Yet the fear was deeper still. He had seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame when he was a child. Quasimodo played by Charles Laughton had so thoroughly terrified him that for weeks he could not cross the line into his bedroom without his mother as escort and she had to stay there while, using all his courage, he looked under the bed. And still further down there were those times, far less frequent now but not wholly departed, when what he was had left his body: that was waiting out there. Fear was in the roots of him.

  It was Rachel, after he had said his final prayers and turned off the light, it was thoughts of Rachel which saw him through the night and might see him through the days until he faced the monster of those exams. She was his way through.

  He saw Rachel standing in the lake, beyond her the shimmer of water smudged with a few boats, beyond that the steep rise of fell and then the sky to the west. Standing, white body white clad, black hair a waterfall down her back, gazing over the magical water to the abrupt rise of dark wooded hills.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘So why would he want to do a thing like that, Mr. Hawesley?’

  William did not want to be drawn. Sadie’s energy always felt like an assault. He had hoped for a few minutes alone with Ellen which is why he had plumped for a Saturday afternoon when he knew Sam was away at the hound trails. Sadie, though, had been called in to help over the last hour while Ellen fitted in a hair appointment. She had stayed to clear up and enjoy being alone, the chatelaine of the pub. William’s visit had spoiled that and besides she had never been easy with him, always glancing at Ellen.

  ‘I really don’t know, Sadie.’ William looked at his watch. He would give it ten more minutes.

  ‘He comes in,’ she lit a cigarette from the live butt of the other, the sole charge of the pub led her to extravagant gestures, On one of them Sunday trips from Scotland because the pubs is closed over there and he plays the piano. Nothing wrong with that. Then he starts to tip folks who sing! One pound, two pounds, five pounds to one woman! Everybody crowds in. He tips everybody. Off they go back to Scotland full of drink. Then we get the police and they say he’d pinched all that money, but why does he give it away, Mr. Hawesley? It’s all psychology, I know that - Ellen says you’re very clever at talking in the car. And I’ve heard you myself once or twice after closing time. So where’s the psychology in that?’

  Her sparely fleshed face, brown already though midsummer had not yet brought much sun, her bony nose - something of the sparrowhawk about her, William thought, black eyes fixed on the prey.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he struggled to oblige: it was his habit, it was, he thought, his duty, ‘he felt so guilty at stealing it that he gave it away to get rid of the guilt.’

  ‘So what did he pinch it for in the first place?’

  ‘There are hundreds of explanations for that, Sadie: poverty, overwhelming desire, an illness …’

  ‘There isn’t hundreds of reasons, Mr. Hawesley. He was a thief. Why does he give it away, though?’

  ‘Well, as I said, his guilt may have got the better of his greed.’

  ‘You’ll have to say that again, Mr. Hawesley.’

  He did, and explained more fully. Sadie thought on it.

  ‘I can see that,’ she said, eventually. ‘Guilt’s the worst thing. Catholics knows all about guilt.’

  She was impressed.

  There was a clatter outside the kitchen door as Joe hustled downstairs on his way to the Baths.

  ‘See you later, Alligator!’ Sadie shouted.

  ‘In a while, Crocodile!’ Then the outside door slammed.

  Sadie nodded, rather proudly.

  ‘Me and Joe.’ She crossed the index and middle finger of her left hand, illustrating intimacy.

  ‘Ellen tells me he’s working very hard for these exams.’

  ‘Too hard.’ Sadie tossed her stub into the empty grate. ‘He’s like a ghost.’ She stared at William, who shifted uneasily. ‘What was it…?

  His guilt got the better of his greed? That’s a good one, Mr. Hawesley. I’ll remember that one.’

  He left after twenty minutes. Sadie lit up again to celebrate her sole sovereignty of the Blackamoor.

  In the small café of the Spotted Cow, Ellen waited for Annie to relax. Ellen had sought her out in the Victoria Arms where she worked as a cleaner and general ‘swiller-out’ - in her own phrase. With some difficulty she had persuaded her to come to the Spotted Cow for a cup of tea. Though this was as casual and homely as could be, a stopover for those catching a bus or taking a break in shopping, it was, for Annie, an ordeal. Annie had never eaten out. Other people did that. Nothing she was wearing was good enough. Nothing looked right. Everybody else looked right whatever they had on. But Annie did not want to invite Ellen to her damp and meagre basement in Water Street and Ellen was too good to refuse.

  So it was the Spotted Cow. A small room beside the ice-cream counter and milk shop. Half a dozen wooden tables and wooden chairs. Squared lino. Just a cup of tea. No sandwich and certainly no cake. One cup of tea. Ellen had secured a table in the corner. Without being seen to look, Annie tried to take it all in.

  ‘Some of them c
ome here every day,’ she whispered. ‘How can they afford it?’

  Ellen took a sip of tea as if to encourage Annie to do likewise. Annie had always looked ill, the heavy white face, bad skin, cheaply cut hair clipped back, always a coat winter and summer, a covering. Sam had kept in touch with her after her husband’s breakdown and disappearance on the tramp, and Ellen was trusted by Annie because of that. They had never sat down to talk. Ellen felt that she was putting Annie at a disadvantage by bringing her to the café but as the customers for ice-cream trickled through despite the gloomy summer day, as more people crowded in then drained away according to the timetable of the buses, and a few nodded and said hello as if being there were just a normal matter, Annie began to relax, conceded another cup of tea, took out her cigarettes, offered one to Ellen, was pleased to learn that Ellen did not smoke. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I never knew that.’ She leaned forward, to whisper, ‘Speed told me you didn’t drink. I think that’s good in a landlady.’ She puffed out a messy huff of smoke. ‘There are those. It’s too easy, isn’t it? No names.’

  ‘I think you should reconsider this offer of a bungalow, Annie.’ Ellen, too, spoke quietly.

  ‘What do I want with a bungalow?’

  ‘It’ll be dry, Annie, and there’s a toilet inside.’

  ‘I like where I’m at.’ Her tone was grim.

  ‘There’s plenty of people you know up at Brindlefield. Those bungalows look right over towards Skiddaw. There’s a bit of garden -plenty will help you with that.’

  ‘It’s too far out of the town. I’ve got to be in the Vic at half past seven. I’m swilling out in the pig market on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’m just next door where I’m at now.’

  Annie’s point was well made. It would be a good fifteen minutes’ walk to the town centre from the new bungalows and uphill all the way back.

  ‘And you’d get soaked most days,’ said Annie, seeing a chance to press home the advantage.

  ‘I still think it would be worth it. The boys would come and give you a hand.’

  ‘They send me something, now and then,’ said Annie. I'm grateful for that. I wouldn’t want them worrying about a bungalow.’

  ‘They could be knocking Water Street down some time, Annie. It might be best to get a good bungalow now.’

  ‘How could they knock Water Street down?’ She was totally disbelieving. ‘It’s the middle of Wigton.’

  ‘I lot of the houses have been condemned for a long time.’

  ‘That hasn’t stopped folk living in them. You used to live in that yard just off, worse than Water Street, you never took no harm.’ Ellen said nothing. ‘Well then.’ She took a full mouthful of tea. ‘It’s good tea,’ she said.

  Ellen could not do the next things: she could not cajole, she could not utter dulcet threats. It was clear that Annie’s mind was closed. So she had failed. Annie saw that Ellen had given up.

  ‘If they put bungalows in the middle of Wigton,’ she said, ‘then I might surprise myself.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Ellen. ‘That’s a good idea.’

  ‘But they won’t,’ said Annie, and finished the tea.

  Back on the street she said,

  ‘I enjoyed that, Ellen. I thought I wouldn’t but I did. Smart spot. I enjoyed it. Tell Sam hello.’

  Sam always tried to avoid Colin. But it was inevitable that their paths crossed at hound trails where Colin had recently become one of the princes of the field, the rare article, the owner and trainer of an outstanding trail hound. On the trail field, with the ring of bookies, which boundaried the day for serious punters, it was hard to avoid the man. Colin enjoyed meeting Sam in such a public place. And when Sam turned away from Henry Allen’s board, there he was, a country suit, dog on thick glistening leash, greedily accepting nods and words of approval from the passing cognoscenti. ‘Bet on mine?’

  ‘I did.’ Sam nodded at the dog. On the nose.’

  ‘Poor price.’

  ‘That’s favourites for you. I took Speetghyll each way.’

  ‘Waste of money.’

  ‘Won’t be the first time, Colin.’ Sam spoke that as a closing remark, moving on.

  ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on Joe.’

  Sam stopped.

  ‘They say he’s swotting too hard.’

  Colin flicked out the word ‘swotting’ as if he were flicking back his hair.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Lads I know from the school. They tell me things. They say he’ll blow up.’

  Sam looked at the scowling grey summer sky for a moment. He did not want to say a word: he just wanted to step out of reach of this creature so indissolubly linked to him. Lads? ‘Blow up’. ‘Swotting’. Colin did not deserve an answer.

  ‘You don’t need to swot hard if the talent’s there. That’s what I say. You keep your cool in those situations when the heat’s on. That’s what I tell the dog.’ He glanced down at the docile prizewinner.

  ‘Well,’ said Sam, ‘I said I’d look out for Tom Johnston. Seen him?’

  ‘Joe won’t listen to me these days.’

  ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘You should never be too busy for family, Sam, that’s what I say. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘I think I've just spotted him.’

  Sam side-stepped the dog and walked across the bookies’ ring, out onto the open field, took out a cigarette, looked across the plain towards the sea.

  Colin would be round his neck for ever.

  On the way back from the Baths, Joe called into his Uncle Leonard’s.

  ‘He’s taken your Auntie Grace to the hospital,’ Mr. Kneale said. ‘Just a little scare, I think, but you can’t be too careful.’

  Grace’s plight registered only lightly with Joe. He had known her since the dawn of knowing, her home had been his and still felt his first place. His mother fretted and was sometimes pessimistic about her. Leonard had changed. He had taken charge and at the same time become much more openly concerned about Grace. Yet the deterioration, though Joe could see it, though it moved him, did not really register for what it was. He was too full of his own life, too ripe in his own growing and getting.

  ‘She’ll survive,’ Mr. Kneale said, sturdily, as he thought to cheer up the boy, ‘she’s an old warrior, your Auntie Grace.’

  Joe made to go but now that Mr. Kneale had got him so unexpectedly alone, he wanted to say what was on his mind. It was a delicate and difficult matter, and very personal, and yet he had known Joe all the boy’s life, stood in, as he liked to think, for the boy’s father during the war years, and sometimes it fell to those in authority to say things which were delicate and difficult, however personal. Yet in the kitchen, the boy now taller than he was, something of the animal about him, with that hair soaked from the swimming, the tremble of effort around him, the alertness, the older man felt diffident.

  ‘How’s the revision coming on?’

  ‘Not so bad.’

  ‘Mr. Braddock tells me you’ve improved by leaps and bounds since the Mocks.’

  Joe let the compliment sink in. He would hold onto that. ‘Is it all beginning to come together?’

  ‘In a way.’

  That was exactly what was happening. Patterns were emerging. The facts, revised again and again, ceased to be the object and the obstacle - they had settled in, quickly and easily available, ready to fall into one of several formations depending on the question. More than that, there was a sense of relaxation on the page; somehow he had time now to set up the essays, in English as well as History, even to play around. Latin was still a grind. Mr. Kneale had put his finger on it. It was coming together. The old Pickwickian figure, as he could now describe him, had often made the telling comment.

  ‘It’s a time of concentration, Joe,’ Mr. Kneale went on. ‘I’ve always thought that it was rather unfair of the Creator to put the young through this when they are so very confused and preoccupied by the uncomfortable changes in their biology but there it is. He does. And we have to put up
with it. But,’ and now there was no retreat, ‘we must never let the Lower Self distract us from the higher aim.’

  He had spotted Joe and Rachel in a particularly passionate embrace in a classroom doorway in the dark corridor which connected the hall to the library. Its groping intensity had alarmed him. As soon as he said ‘the Lower Self,’ Joe blushed at that memory.

  ‘There will be time for the Lower Self,’ said the long-time widower, battling on, ‘but that time is not when you are taking your A levels.’

  Joe looked so sheepish that the schoolmaster stopped. ‘Has Mr. Braddock advised you to spend the first few minutes reading through the questions, all the questions?’

  ‘He did.’ Joe had not been too impressed. He thought that the sooner you found a question you could answer, the more time you would have to get on with it.

  ‘It is crucial,’ said Mr. Kneale, severely. I’ve known many who failed to do their best because they did not consider the paper As A Whole.’

  That stuck. He could not wait to tell Rachel about the Lower Self. He would tell her in the train after the dance. He would make her laugh by exaggerating it. Mr. Kneale was her History teacher which would make it all the better. She liked him poking fun at the teachers, even though he felt guilty about it.

  ‘What did William have to say?’ Sam asked after they had all gone.

  ‘He came back about me trying for the council.’ On her low stool, still drawn up to the grate though there was no fire, she yawned. ‘Joe gets himself back very late on a Saturday.’

  ‘He has to set her home. So what did you say?’

  ‘I told him I’d think about it.’

  ‘I thought you’d already turned it down.’