Crossing the Lines

by Melvyn Bragg

  Buddenbrooks thudded in, Death in Venice, Tonio Kröger, The Gambler, Resurrection, Women in Love, as much of Scott Fitzgerald as he could lay hands on - Joe slab-read daily. Gorgings of literature were wolfed down ill-digested, undiscussed, half comprehended; for a time it was a need. In the permitted gentle anarchy of the last weeks of term, exams over, lessons pointless, results not in, he plunged into the empty space like a sky diver. Suddenly there was all the time in the world to listen to the circled concerts in the Radio Times. He discovered the Proms. He discovered Stravinsky and felt a wild sense of agitation, which he could neither explain nor share. The band found time for three lengthy rehearsals and agreed that Autumn was make or break. They adopted ‘Putting on the Style’ as their theme tune.

  Together, though, was where the real life lay. They had never had so much time together and these last idle weeks at school were a lesson in the daily business of being in a public courtship. But after term ended, they emerged into a toxic freedom of their own. And when the results came, liberating Rachel from some anxiety and Joe from fear, all their careful young regulated love was lit to a bonfire.

  They found reasons to be away together as often as they could. Day trips, spinning bicycle wheels to small coastal villages undisturbed, it seemed, for centuries, duck ponds bordering the narrow tracks, hens strutting outside farm gates, still working horses here and there, old-fashioned breeds of fat cows munching through their seven stomachs, a buttercup and daisy time of small family holdings on lush fields by empty shores which looked over the Solway Firth to its mirror image. In the dunes they found privacy easily and spent long afternoons following the tide, finding animal- and human-looking pieces of driftwood, picking sand out of sandwiches, Joe feeling obliged to swim despite the cold water, Rachel taking one quick dip and that was quite enough, the days long, the sky filling the empty landscape, and coming closer to each other as their love began to move away from school uniform.

  They talked for hours but would have been hard put to recount much of it a few days on. Rachel let Joe loose on fantasies of aspirations. She could not credit that he could talk like that and she admired him for it, though some of the time she listened under sufferance and some of the time she punctuated his sentences with ‘Don’t be soft!’ or ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ to which, at his best, he would respond, ‘Neither do I,’ or ‘I just wanted to say it to see what it sounded like.’ These were times when Joe’s talk was nougated with gobbetted bits from books and the bible and what he’d heard in debates on the radio, seen in plays on television. This cluster, unique to him in their circle, moved her and she liked him more for it because he was like nobody else. And he could make her laugh. He imitated people. He’d got her father off to a T.

  ‘Mother! He says school’s work!’

  ‘Mother! He wants her to stop on and end up just like him!’

  ‘That bloody bottom field. I’ll tame it or I’ll burn it!’

  Or Mr. Tillotson, Rachel’s favourite teacher.

  ‘Watch me saying poetry without moving my lips.’ The Yorkshire drawl, the gravelly cough-laugh. ‘If you move your lips, sounds too soft. It sounds like prooooose.’

  In this summer she began to weave their own history. Remember how they had outfoxed the Donaldsons one day and strolled up behind two of the brothers - one of them with an old pair of German binoculars! How one of her brothers had said, ‘You only die once!’ and Joe had replied ‘But you were dead before you were born,’ which had been the subject that evening, for maybe an hour, of the only non-family, non-farming wrangle Rachel had ever heard in their kitchen. And when they had finished the haymaking, just recently, and when she was supposed to be saying goodbye at the gate, they slipped away and climbed up to the top of the stack, just under the roof of the barn, practically eating the great sweet stink of it, sweating as the cut hay sweated, half undressed, so much, wanting so much more, when Rachel had heard the sure tread of Isaac. He had come either to seek them out - for no sexual feelings, gestures or references of any kind were tolerated at any time in front of Isaac - or just to look on his store, this barn of hay, this land hoard which would secure another good winter. They had breathed so softly Joe wondered whether he was breathing at all. Isaac had stayed for an eternity and then there was the bark of a short laugh. Rachel was always convinced that he knew they were there.

  They talked about Linda the courier in the early days, about their madly risky embraces in school corridors, about what they had ‘really’ felt for each other that first time in Wigton watching On the Water-front, about when they ‘really’ knew.

  Joe became more and more entranced with Rachel, there were hours, sometimes it seemed days, when he could not take his eyes off her. He could not look at the way her shining jet hair curved across her forehead - a ‘failed fringe’ she called it - without a feeling of tenderness. The mane of black hair made his hand itch to hold it, plunge into it, stroke it. The eyebrows were straight and black and blackened further sometimes by a well-licked stub of pencil, perfectly, he thought, he tried to write, framing her eyes just slightly almond-shaped, big, long-lashed, deep brown in the day, darker as night came on. Her nose, which she ridiculed - ‘What a blessed hooter!’ - he thought was bold and to mind came the phrase in Hazlitt speaking of Coleridge’s nose - ‘the index of the will’. It was not a nose to peck, not the pretty small snub of the P.G. Wodehouse perfect English rose: it was strong. Thinnish lips and that crooked smile as if smiling hurt a bit or was not quite allowed in its fullest expression which is why he loved it when she laughed, when her mouth opened and the teeth showed and she laughed so loudly. Finally the skin, country-clear skin, white and peachy until the sun struck and then brown as Sadie’s gypsy face. It was the touch of her though. Underneath the breasts, inside the thighs, sometimes self-consciously trailing a finger over her cheek, skin so soft it beggared silk, he thought, made satin coarse, all but melted under his tentative breath-held fingertips.

  It was the summer of long bicycle rides when sometimes Rachel wore the blue shorts which she hated because they showed ‘my stumpy little legs!’ Stare as he did, Joe did not see stumpy little legs. True they were not exciting. That was because they were uncovered. But they were her legs. When the legs were under that new pink dress which flowed out almost like a crinoline, tented by the starched petticoat, when they were sheathed in stockings, supported on high heels, suspended, chaste, forbidden only to him, then they were exciting. Or perhaps the hidden clothing was exciting: as sex had not yet been consummated the hidden was the sex: the underwear was the sex.

  It was the summer of permitted adventures together. They went youth hostelling into the Lake District for three nights and trudged from Patterdale over Kirkstone Pass with a group of students from Durham University, in whose party they were somehow included that day, Joe in his element, Rachel confirmed at the end of the day in her decision not to stay on at school even though, she protested, some of the students were Very nice people’. The whole of the Lake District’s narrow latticing of sparsely vehicled roads was on the move with rucksacks, greetings, tales of perilous ascents of Scafell and the Langdale Pikes, comparisons between the different lakes. The more learned spoke of ‘high thinking and plain living’, looked out for famous dons who holidayed in the Lakes, saw a landscape layered in literature and art.

  The hostels themselves delighted Rachel, their neatness, everybody equally joining in to cook, clean, wash up, a constant feeling of freedom and privilege, she thought. Tightly bandaged emotions began to loosen among these rather diffident joking flocks of island youth plodding in the paths of genius, raking the scenery for sensation, often taking their first sore footsteps away from adolescence. She was reserved when they invoked Nature, heartily, jovially, ironically. She had been brought up with it and its meanings were different for her, its presence no great infusion into her life. But she held her tongue.

  She liked the dormitories. Girls in one room, boys in another. The sense of being in an
all-female team. She had never been encouraged to play hockey, although she was good at it, because the matches were on a Saturday, always, Isaac decreed, the busiest day for her mother who needed all the help she could get. Rachel enjoyed watching the way the other girls disposed of their clothes, this one over-fussy, that particularly fine-looking young woman with a cut glass accent as slatternly as a tinker, two girls talking non-stop and a bomb could have dropped, she thought, and the talk would have gone on, and she overheard some of it, they talked about nothing but what they had done in the day. It was her first holiday not spent in the house of a relative and everything captivated her - laundry room, drying room, even the neat lists of rules. They had to be in by ten and up at seven and they were and everybody joined in, so easy a company. She one of the youngest but not made to feel it and then away to walk to the next hostel, all leaving at the same time, mostly going in different directions, goodbye, good luck, good to see you.

  Rachel had never known such polite cordiality.

  It was the summer of the Roman Wall and Holy Island. They hitchhiked to what became Rachel’s favourite youth hostel at Once Brewed where they stayed two nights. From here Joe led her up to the Wall where he remembered enough of Mr. Braddock’s speech to convince Rachel. The journey to Holy Island was a haul. They left the hostel as early as they could and hitchhiked north. They had to walk across the causeway: another rule which made Rachel smile was that you could only arrive at a hostel on foot or on a bicycle. ‘Even if it’s pouring down?’ she said. ‘Even if you’ve twisted an ankle?’ She enjoyed Joe’s stiff defence of the system.

  The causeway was under water but they waited and picnicked and finally walked across to the half-time island of Lindisfarne, Holy Island - a place, Joe vaguely knew, of learning and spirituality. He was disappointed. He had been to the Island of Iona with the Scouts and there the dramatic setting, the atmosphere, which wrapped around him the moment he landed, the Christian presence and scholarship of the place had swallowed him whole. He had hoped for the same here. He wanted Rachel to feel what he had felt on Iona. Instead, his disappointment fed her low enthusiasm and he could tell that she was not interested. Even when he tried to do a Mr. Braddock on the site of the ruined mediaeval church, mistakenly believing it was the site of the Celtic saints, her reaction was merely good mannered, her attention wandering as if it were a lesson. But her attention was not caught wherever it wandered: a little castle at the far end of the island which she bet Joe would suggest they walked over to; a few boats beached below the church; a higgledy-piggledy little village with no shops of interest. After that, marram grass.

  Yet it was she who insisted on how much she enjoyed it once they were safely back on the road, thumbs cocked for a sympathetic driver. She would not have got to any of those places without Joe, she knew that. She would be stuck within a stroll of the farm. And Joe tried so hard. He made her laugh sometimes he tried so hard. But he tried for her. To please her. To show off to her. To entertain her. She could not think of any of the others who would do that. Most of her girl friends reported that their boyfriends said nothing most of the time. Jennie claimed that Richard could be more or less silent for hours.

  It was the summer when they finally made love. Not in the woods leading to the spectacular cliff drop of Lodore Falls, as Joe had wished and manoeuvred for; not in that remote milecastle beyond House-steads which he had aimed for so resolutely; not in the marram grass on Holy Island which was so tempting but would have been doubly a sin, somehow; not even in the ancient traditional invitation of the barn.

  They had been to the dance at Carlisle and clung to each other in all the slow dances, often merely swaying. The train had been a torment. Aunt Claire, at whose house Rachel left her bike, was as usual in bed. ‘Sound as a top,’ she said, but they were always welcome to make a cup of tea before they set off for Rachel’s house.

  They lay on the floor. There was just enough space between the two armchairs and the table. It was all very quick. Both were afraid to speak, afraid almost to breathe in case the sound alerted Claire. Rachel took off her knickers, put them in her handbag and snapped the clasp. Joe unbuttoned but did not take off his trousers. Be careful. Yes. Rachel tugged a cushion off the nearest armchair and put it under her head.

  He went into her. His excitement was challenged by intense nervousness. Careful. He had to push. She put her fist in her mouth but only for a moment and even then she nodded. He was there. Yes. There was such a sweet sting about it. It was so strange being inside her body, one, deep inside her now as he thought, her flesh tight around him. It was fantastic! He began to move and she opened her eyes and whispered again, careful. He moved harder. Yes! Her lips parted, he too felt his mouth strain to open. Suddenly she heaved him off. Startled, he spilled over her and flopped on top of her quite unable at first to separate in any way the whirling of colours, sensations, a maelstrom of sensations only slowly cooling to thoughts.

  So at last, Rachel thought. That was it at last. It hurt but it was done, she thought, and it would be better now that it had happened.

  Rachel leaned forward, put an arm around his neck and kissed him lingeringly on the cheek. I do love you,’ she whispered. Awkwardly he returned the embrace. Such thoughts as he could muster were hard to shape: the blinding fact and bewildered joy of it: the distant rumble of punishment for sin, the anxious consequences of sex.

  ‘Time to go,’ she said, gave him a final peck, and was on her feet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was as if, sword still in hand, he had slain the dragon and turned the corner only to find himself confronted by a cliff, sheer, unscalable, no holds to be seen: Oxford University.

  Oxford University was so foreign, so remote a place. Like all boys who played rugby union, from the richest English public schools to the most modest grammar schools, the Varsity Game, where Oxford took on Cambridge, was as essential as an International, though from a better haughtier Corinthian age. And though the twin citadels of scholarship were seen across a chasm of class as wide as a continent, and set on a moated peak of widely unbegrudged privilege, the British public still followed intently their simple annual rowing race on the Thames. Oxford was the academic cousin of Camelot, it was in the constellation of courts, protector and purveyor of rulers in the Government and the Empire. When informed it was Oxford he was being entered for, Joe could merely repeat the word itself: Oxford?’

  After close consideration it had been decided not to enter Brenda. Her Latin A level mark had been excellent but the others not quite as good as they could have hoped for. No sooner was the hint given than Brenda turned it to advantage by announcing that as her father and his father had gone to Edinburgh University it was on Edinburgh she would set her sights, tradition being paramount in these matters. Joe felt put down.

  But not too much. Oxford was a fight worth taking on. He did not have long. The exams would be on him in October. Five weeks. After discussion with Mr. Braddock he had the plan. Latin was to be kept up. French was to be crammed. History of the S level variety was to be further groomed. He set about it.

  Mr. Braddock was an Oxford man and it was to his old college, Wadham, that Joe was to apply. Mr. Braddock told him much that was enticing and daunting about Wadham and about Oxford and Oxford Men. He loaned him his lovingly thumbed copies of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall and Brideshead Revisited. Mr. Tillotson advised him to read Jude the Obscure. Miss Castle at last worked without sarcasm to take the curse off Latin Unseens.

  Joe told his father and mother he had no chance and did not want to talk about it.

  He left early on the Monday morning. Rachel came to the station to see him off. She was to start at the bank the following week.

  On Mr. Braddock’s recommendation he had been reading The Times and the Spectator to help put him in shape for The Interview. For however well he might do in the written work it was, Mr. Braddock assured him, only in the alchemy of The Interview with The Dons themselves that the true Oxfor
d Man could be discovered. He was also reading On the Road - that would be the life! - and his head pulsed excitedly with its transatlantic, free, druggie, rolling life, free-flowing prose. What a sound! But he must not sound like that in the exams and especially not in The Interview. He took Barchester Towers for that. Mr. Tillotson said it was about right for Oxford.

  On Saturdays they would carry up the beer before breakfast. Joe now brought up two crates at a time. He wiped the bottles and put them in the usual military formation on the shelves while Sam cleaned out the pumps, replenished the cigarettes, tidied up the glasses. The bar was extremely narrow but they did not get in each other’s way. Ellen called them when breakfast was on the table, always boiled eggs and toast on Saturdays for some reason or for no reason at all, but it was always boiled eggs.

  The letter was next to Joe’s plate. In the top left-hand corner, it read ‘Wadham College, Oxford’. His breath seemed to evaporate inside him. He forced himself to pour a cup of tea, put in the milk, put in the sugar. Sam was staring at the sports pages. There was no telling whether he was reading. Ellen had gone out to join Sadie in a two-handed assault on the singing room.