Crossing the Lines

by Melvyn Bragg

  ‘Good,’ said Malcolm. ‘And it’s an easy one.’

  Malcolm always wanted to sing. He was all right but they all knew he was no real good. He looked too worried. They all knew but no one wanted to say.

  ‘“Jailhouse Rock”?’ said Joe, hopelessly.

  ‘“Wake Up Little Susie”‘s easier.’ Malcolm felt he was on winning ground. It would be impossible for Joe to push himself forward as the soloist on such an occasion.

  ‘We should go behind the lavatories and have a rehearsal,’ Joe said.

  If Malcolm thinks ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ is an easy one, he knows nothing.

  ‘I can’t make head or tail of it,’ said Malcolm’s father as he drove the silent four back in the van he had borrowed for the evening. ‘That last song - beautifully rendered, I thought - nothing raucous about it at all, Malcolm and Joe blending in almost perfectly, that little stutter by Alan somehow adding to it, all round a fine performance. You came fourth. No disgrace at all. You were a credit to yourselves.’

  ‘Wigton can never win in Workington,’ Alan said bitterly. ‘They’ll never let us. If we had won they’d have beaten us up.’

  Rachel agreed to go youth hostelling in the Lakes at Easter with Brenda and Malcolm, but she was not keen. But Joe seemed so keen, as if he were now the host to those two better off figures, taking them into his domain. Rachel was often caught up in his enthusiasm and if she regretted it later she was fair enough to admit it was her own fault.

  It was nothing like as good as when they had been on their own. Brenda had somehow to be looked after or expected to be looked after or was just a bit incompetent, Rachel could not work out which. Malcolm sort of droned on, Rachel thought, saying interesting things but somehow from him they soon lost all interest for her. Joe, on his own, could talk rubbish and she would enjoy listening. Now he seemed determined to meld in with Brenda and Malcolm. Rachel tried to squash the fear that he was trying to impress them. Why should he bother?

  And it kept being complicated. There were times in the evening when she wanted to be on her own with Joe. She thought that should be obvious. Malcolm and Brenda, though, who were not going out with each other, made it clear that it would be unfriendly to leave them, even bad manners. Rachel was amazed that Joe seemed to find it so hard to walk away. They would drink two or at the most three halves in the nearest pub and either Joe would expand or Malcolm would talk about jazz or Brenda would say anything that came into her head as if that was interesting enough to impress everyone, especially Joe, she thought. Rachel was bored, an unusual state for her to be in when with Joe, and annoyed that Joe did not notice it.

  Moreover, trudging from hostel to hostel in patchy weather, which had seemed such an adventure the first time with Joe, now seemed a bit senseless. They could have caught a bus and just sat about at the other end. She looked longingly at the cars - her driving test was due in a few weeks. Although she was the youngest by a couple of years, she had a faint feeling there was something childish about all this. She had only lasted a fortnight in the Girl Guides. To her surprise, one of the features of the walks which most fascinated her was not the famous mountains nor the famous lakes but the sheep, hundreds and hundreds of them, almost hanging off some of the crags, a wonder they did not fall off, she thought, and all so carefully segregated flock from flock by the net of drystone walling - the best thing, in her opinion, about the whole of the Lake District. It was not an opinion she wanted to air. She reassured Joe that everything was fine.

  Two of the girls in the bank had gone to Spain for their holidays. Rachel could have gone with them and it took an effort not to regret that she had turned it down.

  They met the two men at the Patterdale Youth Hostel. Ben and Victor had been to the same public school, they had just finished their National Service in the army, they too were off to university in October and this was their first time in the Lake District, their first time in the North, and the six of them ended up in the snug bar of the pleasantly old-fashioned country pub at the edge of the village.

  Ben, Rachel thought, was exceptionally handsome. Tall, broad, nearly blond hair, swept back but not with Brylcreem like Joe’s, the right kind of casual shirt on and the best blue jeans on a man she had ever seen. Rather surprising to see somebody with that accent wearing jeans and all the spicier for it. She knew that he liked the look of her. She noted that Brenda, even as they walked to the pub, was glancing appreciatively all over him. Malcolm, Joe and Victor were ahead, discussing politics: Victor, Ben had already told them, intended to go into politics. This announcement, she saw, had rather stunned Joe.

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ said Ben, as they sat crammed around a small oak table under heavy oak beams holding up a low ceiling just repainted white for the new season. Ben and Victor had pints. ‘You, Malcolm, are going up to Durham to do Natural Sciences. You’ -Brenda - ‘are off to Edinburgh for Classics - sooner you than me!’ The quip was taken by Brenda to be a compliment and Rachel rather squirmed at the way Brenda squirmed - Ben had that effect. ‘You’ -Joe - ‘are up to Oxford, bravo! And you’ - Rachel caught the pause, caught the softening look, maybe this whole little game had been for this moment - ‘refuse to reveal your hand.’

  ‘Nobody asked,’ said Rachel, tapping her cigarette ash into the ashtray. ‘I am going up to Martin’s Bank in Wigton as from next Monday morning and by the look of it for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Good on you!’ said Victor, and he raised his glass.

  ‘The only one of us,’ Ben said, ‘earning an honest living.’

  Joe saw the way he looked at Rachel and he observed the way she took and returned the look and jealousy flash-flooded through him. The pain of it was sudden and unbearable.

  ‘Victor’s brilliant, of course,’ Ben said, and the rather sallow-faced, slight-framed, five-o’clock shadowed Victor crossed his arms and shook his head vigorously. Oh yes you are,’ Ben chided him. ‘He’s always been too modest,’ he explained. ‘But this idea of going into politics is bonkers.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Joe’s question was harsh, Rachel noticed. So - she saw - did Ben.

  ‘They’re all power mad, aren’t they?’ said Ben. ‘Bound to be. That’s why they do it.’

  Rachel laughed. She felt like saying, ‘I agree,’ but she held her tongue.

  ‘I agree,’ said Brenda, who couldn’t mean it, Rachel thought. Brenda would be bound to think that politicians were to be looked up to like bank managers and doctors.

  ‘Why are they power mad?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Because they seek power. And when they get it, they want to tell you and me what to do with our lives.’

  ‘No they don’t.’ Joe’s attempt to soften his tone failed. ‘They pass laws which they’re entitled to pass because we elect them.’

  ‘I think Ben might be referring more to the psychology than the actuality,’ Victor said.

  ‘It’s the same thing,’ said Joe.

  ‘Hardly,’ Ben said.

  ‘How isn’t it, then?’

  Rachel was beginning to cringe. Even Brenda looked a touch bemused at the turn of the conversation.

  ‘I suppose we’re distinguishing between the inner man and the outer man.’ Ben’s voice became something of a drawl. ‘Internal, external: private, public: intimate and public. That sort of thing.’

  ‘It still doesn’t explain it.’

  ‘I think,’ said Victor, ‘what Ben means …’

  ‘I think I know what he means,’ said Joe, who was very far from sure, ‘but what I’m saying is what you think and what you do are bound to be connected so if somebody wants to be a politician to do good, how can that make him somebody who does it just to seek power or tell you what to do?’

  ‘There’s a point there,’ Victor said to Ben.

  Joe really should have left it there, he knew that, but only in that overwhelmed minority in his mind, which fought hopelessly to stave off the jealousy.

  ‘And somebody has to have power,
haven’t they? Have you read Machiavelli?’ Ben hesitated and then, almost truculently, shook his head. ‘Well, read him if you want to know about power. Except I disagree with him because he’s too general.’

  ‘You. Disagree. With Machiavelli?’

  ‘Yes. Because he didn’t take real democracy - our democracy -into account. He couldn’t. It hadn’t been invented. But power in a democracy is an entirely different thing. All power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely, I’ll grant you some of that. But Lord Acton wasn’t the greatest believer in democracy either.’ His voice had risen: the pub was embarrassed.

  Rachel blushed when Ben said, in a sarcastic tone, ‘So it’s Lord Acton now?’

  ‘Yes. Because in a democracy we can kick them out. We can kick them out whenever we want. And in our democracy which is the best there is, they have to report back to their constituencies and at a pinch they can kick them out as well. So if they are seeking power - at all and I would dispute that - then it’s a very limited sort of power, isn’t it? Not the sort of power that does people real harm, not fascism.’

  ‘Nor communism,’ said Victor, seeing perhaps a way to divert this.

  ‘Do you think they’re on a par?’ Joe, surprised, changed his tone.

  ‘It’s an interesting one,’ Victor said. ‘I happen to disagree with my friends on the Left on this one.’

  ‘There can’t be worse than fascism,’ Joe said. ‘How can there?’

  ‘Tyranny takes many forms,’ Victor said.

  ‘Victor knows A LOT about politics,’ said Ben, rising to his feet, ‘we have an Angry Young Man here. Another round everyone?’

  ‘I’ll have a pint this time,’ said Joe.

  ‘I’ll help you.’ Brenda picked up the glasses Ben could not carry and went across to the bar with him, where their whispered huddle convinced Rachel that they were talking about Joe, who had suddenly lost energy and merely listened as Victor talked about Stalin. Why was Joe so jealous?

  Joe kept close by Rachel as they walked back in the dark to the hostel. Brenda lingered behind with Ben. Victor and Malcolm had discovered true happiness in a shared infatuation with Charlie Parker.

  ‘Let’s go down here.’ A path alongside the hostel, leading to woods.

  ‘It’s time to go in.’

  ‘We’ve got seven minutes,’ said Joe, and took her by the arm. Scarcely past the gable end of the old hostel when he said, in a voice of torment,

  ‘You fancied him.’

  There was no reply. Only the dimmest light from the end of the path. The moon was not up. But he saw well enough that Rachel’s expression was sullen. The jealousy, though suppressed, seemed to infect his blood and press into his head, invading it. ‘You did. You fancied him!’

  ‘He’s very good looking, that’s all.’ She was defiant. ‘But I could tell.’ Joe’s throat tightened. ‘I could see by the way you looked. And he looked.’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake! I can look at somebody, can’t I?’ No. No. No.

  ‘I’m not your blooming slave, you know!’ Rachel would not be meek. ‘I’m allowed a mind of my own. Maybe I did fancy him! Maybe I did! So what?’

  Joe’s feelings fused. How could what was them be so easily betrayed? How could ‘fancying’ somebody else ever come into it? What did that mean? He felt breathless. No! A right hand leapt towards her face and stopped the merest space before the skin of her cheek. She pulled away and even in the low light he caught the fierceness of her expression, the fury, maybe hatred. The tightness in his mind broke into a confusion. Then shame. Then, seeing her face unchanged, fear. And silence.

  ‘We’d better go back,’ said Rachel, eventually, in as level a voice as she could manage.

  She walked past him, rather as if sleep walking.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Ignored, he repeated, ‘I’m really sorry.’

  She went in ahead of him. Joe walked into the hostel as if he were a condemned man set to begin a life sentence.

  ‘I’m not so sure it’s a good idea for Richardson to stay on into the summer term, even if it is only for a month.’ Miss Castle had picked her time and company carefully. Both Mr. Braddock and Mr. Tillotson liked to hog the place on Fridays.

  ‘He’s getting way above himself. He simply barged into my class yesterday as if he had all the right in the world. Of course I sent him out but that’s not the point.’

  ‘He’s reading enough,’ said Mr. Tillotson. ‘That can’t be wholly bad,’ he offered the Latin teacher one of his sly smiles, ‘even if it is in English. But you’re probably right. You usually are.’

  Miss Castle was flattered. Mr. Tillotson was not a flatterer.

  ‘I admit he’s gone off the rails once or twice.’ Mr. Braddock had already charged his pipe but in his agitation made no attempt to light it. ‘I admit that. But he has to have his fling, don’t you think? Find his feet? Make his mistakes?’

  ‘He’s never been bad at that,’ said Mr. Tillotson, and Miss Castle laughed.

  ‘They called it Sowing Wild Oats when the young bucks did it,’ said Mr. Braddock.

  ‘Is he still with that girl?’ Miss Castle put as much disapproval into ‘girl’ as she could possibly muster.

  ‘Rachel Wardlow? I believe so. I thought she was rather good for him.’

  ‘Clever girl,’ said Mr. Tillotson. ‘Farmers!’

  ‘Perhaps it would have been better if he’d pushed off sooner. Still, he’s going to work for the Abbé Pierre in Paris. That should help sort him out.’

  ‘As long as his French is up to it.’

  ‘Rather pious,’ said Mr. Tillotson.

  ‘It was his own decision,’ said Mr. Braddock. He lit his pipe. Joe had behaved erratically, especially since Easter. It was a disappointment. He blew out a lungful of smoke. Miss Castle moved to the window. Eventually Mr. Braddock announced his conclusion. ‘He hasn’t learned how to handle free time. That’s the problem.’

  It had been nearly a fortnight now. They still saw each other. They went to dances, walked, though not as much, did not now seek out their cave on the Moss. He had asked her to forgive him more than once, beginning the morning after, and she had begun by saying, ‘Let’s forget about it,’ but so sharply that it was obvious she had not forgotten about it. Joe believed he would never forget about it as long as he lived. How could you threaten the person you loved most? Even when all the excuses were laid out - you shouldn’t be able to do that. Not to Rachel. He kept asking her, not nagging, he thought, just asking, sometimes no more than two or three times a day. ‘Let’s forget about it’ softened into ‘I’ll have to think about it’, which, in time, became ‘I think we should both forget about it’. She could not bring herself to say, ‘I forgive you.’

  Joe was used to being forgiven by God Himself after the general confession. Not to be forgiven by Rachel was terrible. He deserved it but it was terrible. But she would not budge in those weeks and finally she said, ‘I know what you want me to say, Joe, but I’m not saying it and that’s that.’ Hers was a harder ancestry than the forgiving Anglicanism of Joe.

  He knew he had ruined it. There was a barrier between them now - something as thin as cigarette paper but it was there. It was there when they said hello, it was there when he put his arm around her, it was there when he danced, however much he joked, however tightly he held her, it was there in the train even - she was not as keen on the train now - it was there in Claire’s house and even when they made love on the floor it was there and Joe knew he had ruined it.

  As the time came for his departure for Paris the panic began to grow. He had not been altogether keen in the first place. It was Mr. Braddock who had pushed him to a decision and the work of the Abbé Pierre with the clochards, the down-and-outs in Paris, struck both a religious and a romantic response in Joe. This would be paying back debts due to a fading God; gratitude for former feelings of religious intensity. And the Abbé Pierre was a Great Man. But who was the Abbé Pierre compared with Rachel? How c
ould he get out of it? How could she be changed back?

  On his last night she was suddenly again as warm as she had ever been. They went for a walk. The evening was soft and light and the Moss was too full of others and so they turned back and sneaked into the barn. She was loving with him again and the difference and the pain of imminent absence combined to fill him with immense love for her. It was inconceivable she would not always be in his life. His head was in her hair. He breathed her in. They were still half dressed.

  ‘I am really sorry,’ he murmured.

  ‘I know.’ She stroked his shoulder almost maternally. It’s all right now. You didn’t hit.’ I do love you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She pushed him away to look at him rather solemnly. Always. Then she kissed him as deeply as ever she had done and they stayed there as late as they dared.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Joe hitchhiked to London and took the train to Dover where he caught the ferry. By the time he got to France he felt cocooned in unaccustomed solitude. It took him some time to find his way out of Calais. He had enough money to take the train to Paris but the hitching in England had been successful enough and it did not occur to him it would be much different here. It was strange, this sense of solitariness, when there was so much around that caught his interest. But that was the balance. Now one now the other swung into the ascendancy. He decided he needed to eat and went to a small café but all he could get was bread, a long roll of bread, which was unaccustomedly delicious, and a bowl of milky coffee which again amazed him by its foreign luscious taste. He was truly abroad.

  He had been abroad once before, a school trip to Holland when he was fourteen. They had been allowed to pretend to bid for tulips in the tulip market, they had seen The Night Watch they had been to Haarlem and taken a trip around the canals. Water pistols had become a rage among the boys. The girls had been astonished that people left their curtains open at night so that you could see into the houses. He had spent a good deal of time buying presents and then worrying because the teacher said they had to list them all and if they came to over five pounds they would have to pay tax or have them confiscated at Customs. Some of the food had not been cooked properly.