by Melvyn Bragg
Small flickerings, acknowledgements along the way. A difference. Mr. Braddock had a chat with her when he came into the bank on a Saturday morning, a dignity-enhancing adult to adult chat which she was sure would not have happened had she not been Joe’s recognised girlfriend. Linda said it was a shame he was going to university because students were too poor to get married and it put the whole thing back for years.
The dress was packed very carefully into a suitcase, with the new shoes, the good handbag. She would be staying overnight at Claire’s. Her mother was driving her into the town or rather letting Rachel drive: she had asked for, and to her amazement been given, driving lessons for her seventeenth birthday.
‘You’ve never been in St. Mary’s, have you?’
They were ahead of time. The Anglican church stood directly opposite the Kildare Hotel. Joe went in, found the lights and switched some of them on. Rachel felt awkward and solemn but mostly awkward. Joe’s religiosity was his own business. A change came over him, she noticed. It would have been impossible not to notice. A stiffness in his walk. A dreaminess as he looked about and pointed out one or two of the features. He went into himself, where she could not nor did she want to follow. They walked side by side down the nave to the chancel steps where they stopped. Joe bowed, unobtrusively, to the cross on the altar: Rachel felt no part of this. It seemed he was saying a prayer, to himself, but still a prayer. She looked above the altar. The vicar had painted the ceiling deep blue. There were golden stars, the biggest of all hovering over the cross. Rachel tried to force back her reflection that it was a bit obvious. When they turned and walked back towards the west door, Joe put his arm around her.
‘Smack on time,’ Joe said as they went up the steps through the big door, up a thickly carpeted staircase which curved gracefully and into the party.
Rachel saw Jennie immediately and was reassured. She needed someone she knew well. Richard waved to them both. There was Malcolm, who was at least a familiar face, Brenda of course, and Veronica, but few others from school. Everybody save Jennie had been two years ahead of her, but it was not as bad as she had feared. There were those she did not know, a few who went to the private Quaker school on the edge of the town, three or four boys, as Isaac had forewarned, who were at local public schools. Joe seemed to know most of them. He was easy enough with everybody, even a bit cocky, she thought, but better perhaps than overawed, as she was. And part of her liked his strut.
The doctor and his wife and a few of their friends kept their distance, skilfully allowing the party to seem entirely in the hands of Brenda and her friends. Brenda’s mother was eccentric, Joe thought. He would see her and another woman early every Sunday morning from Easter to September waiting for the first bus to Keswick. They were dressed in trousers and boots, big socks, old jackets, bulging haversacks. They would lean against the black railings just along from Grace and Leonard’s house, smoking, off to climb mountains. There was something about them that said they didn’t give a damn. Joe picked up a faint resonance and liked it and was pleased to see her.
Malcolm organised the records and apart from a little too much jazz, the music was good to dance to. Everybody joined in every dance. By the time they panted to a halt at just after ten for the buffet supper, the country dances, the excuse-mes, the ladies’ choice and gentlemen’s choice had thoroughly mixed them up and people whose initial expressions had put Rachel off proved perfectly friendly. She relaxed and forgot she was the youngest, the ‘country cousin’ as she had dubbed herself to her Aunt Claire, just there ‘because of you’, she had told Joe.
‘I’m enjoying this,’ she whispered to Jennie.
‘I didn’t think I would either. It’s just because Richard played for England, you know.’
Rachel did know. Jennie made sure of that. Richard’s triumph six months ago - not only playing for but being Captain of England Schoolboys - had roared through the county. Joe’s achievement was not in the same league. Rachel knew that Jennie, once again, was making this clear, but she rather liked her for it.
They were sipping lime squash through a straw. There were bottles of light ale available for the boys but supplies were limited and demand was monitored.
‘It was all so posh but it was also good! Rachel brought these two observations together as she freshened up in the Ladies’. Posh was usually to be avoided. Posh made you uneasy to be there. Posh was the other side of what you were. Well, this was posh. A grand and glamorous room, big chandelier, deep armchairs with those English rose patterns all over them, a decorated ceiling, massive wine-coloured velvet curtains, down to the floor, a big buffet, everybody dressed up to the nines, accents you never heard.
‘Good, isn’t it?’ They were dancing a slow foxtrot which allowed them to come quite close to each other though nowhere near as close as at the County Ballroom where you could really cling. She gave him that quick happy nod.
Later, ‘Let’s have a look at that eye.’ Brenda’s father put a thumb on the tiny scar. He turned to the other two men. ‘This young fella was within an ace of losing that eye. Three stitches, was it? Four? Not a whimper. How old? Eight? Nine?’
Joe felt like an exhibit.
‘You’ve done well, Joe. We’re all very proud of you.’ He stood dumb.
‘I always think it’s a pity the best brains have to leave the county,’ said the solicitor. ‘Carlisle should have been given a university years ago.’
‘What do you think about the future of Nuclear Power, Joe?’ Joe had no thoughts at all but he was being included and he had to.
‘It’s better than coal-mining,’ he said.
‘For the individual, undoubtedly, but what about the Nation as a whole?’
He tried to think of an answer.
‘It’s the future,’ said the solicitor. ‘It is the only way we can keep up with the Americans.’
Brenda’s mother, who was on gin, made her customary intervention. Everybody who could had to do an act. Brenda kicked it off with her comic recitation. One of the public schoolboys did a funny mime of someone trying to get a piece of sticky tape off their fingers.
Two of the Quaker girls sang a medley from The Pirates of Penzance. Joe itched to join in. Rachel tugged at his jacket to try to keep him in the safety of the deep three seater sofa.
Malcolm, whose initial reluctance to be part of the Memphis Four (Edward had quit) had been outweighed by the pleasure he took in public performance, was taking lessons in jazz piano. He and Joe had tried to run something up once or twice, while rehearsing in the pub. There was a piano in the corner of the Kildare reception room. Malcolm needed little urging. They were cheered as they walked across.
‘Bye Bye Love’ was a good opener. You could just do it on chords and Malcolm managed. The song was popular. They did it as a duet. Everybody hummed along.
The applause was emboldening. ‘Rock Island Line’ was virtually a single chord and the applause included whoops of appreciation. Rachel beckoned him back.
They attempted ‘Jailhouse Rock’. Joe got carried away with his impersonation which at first went down well - cheers, even. Joe was Elvis. He could feel everything Elvis felt. He could get right into his skin. He’d seen the film twice. He did Elvis to a T, he thought. But quite suddenly, the piano seemed to go in an entirely different direction. Malcolm panicked, hesitated, attempted a covering chord, missed, made a final effort, desperate, then stopped, leaving Joe strung out in the middle of the floor half way through the song, gyrating helplessly. He turned to Malcolm who just raised up his hands. He withered to a halt.
‘I should have gone on,’ he said, later, in the course of the tenth or twelfth analysis with Rachel. ‘I could have gone on without him. I should have gone on without him.’
‘Nobody minded. It didn’t stop Brenda eyeing you.’
‘Oh God!’
‘Everybody’ll have forgotten about it.’
‘All he had to do was bang out a chord!’
‘You were great till then. Ev
erybody clapped anyway.’
‘That made it worse. Oh God!’
‘Brenda’s mother seemed to get a good laugh out of it.’
‘She did.’
‘What did she say to you?’
‘Nothing much.’
Brenda’s mother had said, ‘Quite extraordinary. And going to Oxford? You know, while you were doing all that, I had the distinct impression you weren’t really English. You’d be far better off being an American.’
They had played charades for a while and then the final dances when a couple of lights were turned off and light smooching was permitted, but not by Rachel.
But on the floor in Claire’s house in Church Street there was less restraint. Joe knew that the whole world was in them, a new world, never known before, as they made love in silence in front of the last glow of the fire. Outside the clouded midwinter night wrapped them round in deep erotic secrecy.
PART FOUR
OPEN COUNTRY, 1958
CHAPTER THIRTY
Joe met her after work. They hiked towards her home slowly, almost wordlessly, and stopped at the convenient wood. They took the bikes into the wood itself. It was damp and Joe’s usual fidgety attempts to find ‘a good place’ were, Rachel thought, a waste of time. Finally she said, ‘This’ll do,’ and sat on an uncomfortable but dryish heap of stones from a long-forsaken drystone wall. They smoked.
They had not even kissed but, Joe thought, it was too late now. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’
We could talk, Joe thought, talking helped, talking could unwind the fear for a few minutes, why won’t she talk? ‘I put it on too late,’ he said. ‘It’s done now.’
Sometimes he was too carried away and too fumble-fingered to deal with it. And there was a phrase of Rachel’s - ‘It’s like fiddling about with an inner tube’ - which had stuck in his mind. Pausing to put the thing on interfered with what they were really doing. It was more than just reluctance: though he could not articulate it, the intervention spoiled what was essential; instinct had to be shackled.
‘It’s both our faults,’ said Rachel, offering a small smile. ‘We get carried away.’
‘When do you think the stuff comes out? The real stuff, the stuff that counts?’
‘I don’t know.’ Rachel was cornered. There was no one she could ask. There was no book she knew of which could help her. Even Linda was out of the question because even Linda could not be expected to keep this sort of information to herself.
‘That first stuffs rather watery,’ said Joe, hopefully.
‘I’ve thought of that.’
‘Maybe it’s only, you know, when …’
‘I know.’
‘I generally get it on before then.’
‘Or you don’t.’
‘But then I pull out.’
‘But it goes everywhere,’ Rachel said. ‘And all over your fingers.’
‘Doesn’t it die off in the open air?’
‘Does it?’
Although she did not want to talk about it, Rachel yielded to Joe’s persistence and her resentment began to fade.
‘How do you feel?’ Joe’s eyes narrowed as he examined her face for clues. She turned away.
‘Normal.’
Which was true enough, save that Joe’s questioning threatened to depress her. This was the second time. On the previous occasion she had been distressed by the fury of his anxiety, a state of uncontrol which in some way chimed with the worst furies of Isaac and set up a similar resistance in her. It was crazy that it might have happened again so soon.
‘What would we do?’ he said, as he had said to her on several occasions.
Rachel lit another cigarette and breathed in deeply.
‘There’s ways of getting rid of it. That’s something I have heard about.’
Joe’s throat caved dry.
‘That’d be wrong.’
Rachel gave that bare flicked nod.
‘Let’s wait and see; it’s only one day overdue.’
Maybe, Joe had thought, it would be just as well. They could get married. He would find a job in Wigton. So he need not leave Wigton. His Uncle Leonard had just the other day said, teasingly but still said, that there was always the junior clerk’s job waiting. It was not, in truth, an unattractive prospect. Yet there was within this coiled frenzy of anxiety, fear, that if It happened, his world would end. Those moments of relief when in his imagination they were married and homed in Wigton and doing much as they were doing now were always bombed: it would be the end. It was unimaginable, he could not deal with this fear: it would wipe him out.
When Rachel got home she went straight to her bedroom. Her mother had guessed what was going on but said nothing, waiting to be called on. She took up a soft boiled egg and toast.
‘That’s kind,’ Rachel said. The women looked steadily at each other.
‘Anything else you want - just give a shout.’
Rachel went back to her book. She wished Joe were calmer.
‘There’s no need for an American accent, Richardson.’
‘It’s an American play, Mr. Tillotson.’
‘Standard English can cope.’
‘I’ve been practising, Mr. Tillotson.’ Joe could tease the teacher now.
‘Unfortunately, it shows.’
‘But it won’t make sense. I know it’s called Our Town but it isn’t. It’s an American town.’
‘It’s an archetypal small town, Richardson. It’s just as much English as American. It could even be Australian. As a matter of fact, I have a hunch Thornton Wilder pinched the graveyard scene from Thomas Hardy. Ideas move around, Richardson, so can places, and the same notion can address superficially different circumstances. This is a small town in America which is much like a small town in England which is one of the reasons I chose it.’
‘And because it’s got a big cast.’
‘And because it has a big cast. May we proceed? You have a lot to learn.’
Joe hurled himself into this first rehearsal, gabbling, over-emphasising, over-dramatising, acting like mad.
‘It’s a quiet piece,’ said Mr. Tillotson, amused, the chuckle in the gravel voice. ‘It’s a modest piece about a modest town, Richardson. We decided not to do Macbeth.’
But Joe would not be bound, not on this afternoon. He had been into the town and met Rachel in her break and they had walked up Church Street where she said,
‘Good news.’
‘Make or break?’ Malcolm said.
‘Make or break.’ Joe nodded. Alan, miming with his saxophone, also nodded. John had gone to the lavatory.
They were the eighth on. The skiffle group competition was in Workington, a West Coast coal and steel town, about twenty miles from Wigton. Twenty-five pounds for the winners, but much more importantly a guaranteed place in the last three for BBC Television’s national county versus county entertainment programme.
‘There would be no stopping us then,’ said Malcolm.
‘Cool,’ said Alan, sweating steadily. ‘Cool.’
‘That lot sound good,’ Joe said. Only a thin wall separated the hall from the back room, the tea room, now dressing room crammed with fourteen skiffle groups.
John came back.
‘I think I want to go,’ said Alan.
‘There’s a queue. And somebody’s been sick’
‘All the way from Wigton, Ladies and Gentlemen, a big hand, four young lads, the Memphis Four.’
The rule was that the first song be classic skiffle. Then they were allowed a non-skiffle but pop piece and they went for ‘Houn’ Dog’. Malcolm’s father had put in relevant oooh-aaahs and this was far and away Alan’s best shot on the saxophone. That went down well. The judges compared score cards.
‘They want to see you again, lads,’ the M.C. said, looking at the note. ‘So don’t go back to Wigton yet. Another round of applause please, Ladies and Gentlemen.’
They went outside. Across the road, towards the sea, the sky was lit up from the steel works.
Joe remembered that his grandfather used to work here, in the pits, under the sea. He must have been brave, Joe thought.
Fags were lit up.
‘It’ll be sudden death,’ Malcolm said. ‘One number.’
‘One number.’
‘Will they want skiffle?’ Alan always felt just a touch redundant in skiffle with the saxophone.
‘It says skiffle competition.’ Malcolm was firm.
‘It didn’t seem to matter when we did “Houn’ Dog”.’
‘We could do it again,’ Alan said, ‘that way they could hardly complain.’
It was cold, a light drizzle coming in from the sea, across from Ireland, across from America. They knew they had to suppress any excitement: it would be bad luck to be excited.
‘Lack of originality,’ Joe said. ‘They could get us on that.’
‘“Wake Up Little Susie”,’ Malcolm said. ‘We can make that sound skiffly.’
‘That means two singers,’ said Joe, the singer.
‘We’ve done it before,’ Malcolm sounded just a touch heated. ‘My dad says that at least the Everly Brothers have a bit of musicality in their songs.’
But they don’t have the thump, Joe thought, they just don’t hit the spot like Elvis Presley. He was warmed up now. The crowd had really liked ‘Houn’ Dog’.
‘Maybe we should just do “Houn’ Dog” again,’ said Joe, ‘like Alan suggested. Tried and tested.’
‘You were the one who went on about originality,’ Malcolm said.
‘I can do “Wake Up Little Susie” now,’ Alan said. ‘I’ve sorted it out since then.’
