Crossing the Lines

by Melvyn Bragg

  He wanted to tell her that Hans had taken him to a jazz club just off the Boulevard St. Michel and he had actually seen Memphis Slim at the piano. Hans had gone on to another club but Joe stayed for the next set. Memphis Slim! But he feared that would sound too much like a ‘night out’ and wrote instead about Ste. Chapelle.

  Darkness began to mingle in with the street lights but instead of alerting people to go home, it seemed to increase their determination to stay on the streets and the parade went on, entertained now by a man with a tame white rat, a fire eater, a unicyclist, a circus for free, and Joe ordered another cognac, another coffee. He felt absorbed in what was around him. He was part of this life, this play, the flow of it, just sitting there.

  He had eaten little since the midday meal in the school and he was by now light-headed and finally he relaxed. He was in Paris, in the Boulevard St. Germain, writing, even though it was a letter, writing in a French café, and now young roller skaters appeared, racing towards oncoming cars and at the very last minute swerving away like matadors and the angry cars honked and honked and honked.

  That night he woke up to the rattle of small arms. The boys crowded to the windows of the dormitory. Hans told him that the Bois de Vincennes was noted for its concentration of Algerian terrorists. It went on for more than an hour. Hans said it was war, by other means but it was war. They were lucky, he said, to witness this new war. Friedrich called the Algerians ‘Les Nègres’ and said he thought all terrorists were cowards. Terrorism, he said, was a coward’s way to make war. Joe thought he might agree with that. Yet, as they talked, he found himself saying, what else do you do if you have no army and a real cause? What else can you do?

  In the morning it seemed far away. That was the only night it happened. It was as if it had been in another world.

  With just a couple of days to go the energy went out of Paris. He wanted to be back with Rachel. He hunted for a present. He had saved for it.

  He went to Montmartre where he had noted that the painters and jewellers in the square offered what he considered wonderful works of art within his pocket. For some time he hovered over a small painting of Sacre Coeur. It was an original, no doubt about it. The painter was doing another while Joe made up his mind. Fantastic, Joe thought, to get it so right and yet so small. There was another painting, equally attractive, of the view across Paris from the top of the steps of Sacre Coeur. But would Rachel really like it? In the end, after about two hours of close inspection and the weighing up of rival claims, he chose a bracelet, a thick broad band of what could have passed for solid gold, shaped very unusually, Joe thought, like nothing he had ever seen in a shop or anywhere else for that matter. The artist said it was a unique piece and Joe knew he had bought not only a bracelet but very possibly a true work of art.

  He walked down to Pigalle bearing his gift. He had not been to this decorous boulevard of strip. He was drawn along by the saucy photographs, the big bold elegant illuminations, the seductiveness, not at all sleazy, even cheerful, practical, business as usual. Yet inside Joe there was a distinctly sleazy excitement. He walked self-consciously, trying to pretend he was just out for a balmy evening stroll. Doorways opened to sexy music and photographs of sultry beauties already far further undressed than anything he had ever seen in TitBits. It was without any question a betrayal of his relationship with Rachel to creep off to a strip show. It was another needless sin, just when he was beginning to sort out the sin of making love to Rachel. It was what old men did, in mackintoshes. He had read that the girls who did it had a terrible time and only did it under protest or because they had to bring up young children. He would probably get robbed. They all looked too expensive.

  Yet being in Paris for nearly six weeks without seeing a single strip show was surely not really being in Paris. It was part of what Paris was. He would never see one again. Everything ought to be experienced. What harm could it possibly do? Who would ever know? Could he afford it?

  Just about. A small doorway with the word APACHE lit up over its portal. He went in as if he were entering the lair of Jezebel.

  It was very well lit, which was a disappointment. He had expected something darker, sensuous drapery, side lights, maybe some snakes behind glass and half-naked waitresses. The usual man in his long white apron asked him what he wanted and, fearing the price of everything, Joe ordered a demi-pression. The waiter took his time.

  No one was on the tiny cleared patch of floor which must be the stage but already Joe was all but suffocating with anticipation.

  The lights went out. A spotlight hit the stage. Curtains at the back, which Joe had not noticed, parted with enticing slowness and revealed a long bare leg, scarlet painted toenails, a head, a torso, and then the whole woman, in what Joe thought of as a sort of Hawaiian grass skirty thing and a broad red band, seemingly made of red towelling, covering her top. Tropical music played and she swayed and so did the skirt, which kept opening up vistas of strong thighs. After some time the skirt was slid off, breathtakingly disclosing knickers that matched the towelling top. After an age that came off too. Joe was rapt. She made them wobble. She made them sort of do circles. He did not know whether he ought to look. He could not take his eyes off them. She pretended she was going to take off her knickers. Her thumbs hooked inside them. Her light went out.

  The lights went on. Joe looked around furtively, swallowed hard and drank too much of his demi-pression in one go.

  There were four more, one of whom, dressed like a cow-girl in a very short fringed skirt, was described as doing the original Apache dance. Joe was impressed.

  More than that, as he walked to the metro clutching Rachel’s present, he was giddy. He had not eaten since lunch and the force of what he had witnessed had stirred him as it ought not to have done. It was a pity, he thought, as the train approached the Bois de Vincennes station, that his last visit in Paris should have been to Apache. How much better… but it was fruitless attempting to dismiss it in his own mind. He could tell the truth there, couldn’t he? Well then: he was glad he’d gone and if he’d stayed another night he’d undoubtedly have gone again; funds permitting. Especially as nobody knew or need ever know.

  He got fed up with hitching near Crewe and went into the town hoping he could catch the last train, later than usual on the Friday night. If not he would sleep on a bench until the first morning connection. But he was lucky, he could just afford it, and the train crawled into Carlisle at eleven-thirty, too late for a Wigton connection and too late for a bus. He had to walk clear out of the city before he got a lift, a lorry on its way to the West Coast. He offered the driver a Disque Bleu and enjoyed his cursing and coughing.

  Sam opened the door.

  ‘What time is this?’ He smiled at the bedraggled young man, kitbag slung over his shoulder, haversack dangling from the free hand.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Glad to see you.’ He stepped back. He had slipped a raincoat over his pyjamas. As Joe came through the door there was a fumbled handshake. Sam wanted to hug him: safe home. ‘Your mother’ll come down and make you some tea.’

  ‘I don’t need any, thanks. I got a cup on the train. I’m fine.’

  ‘Good time?’

  ‘Good time.’

  ‘I'll leave you then. You don’t want to talk now.’ Just a hope. ‘Thanks for the letters.’

  ‘Talk in the morning?’

  Why was he so keen to be alone? What did a few minutes with his father matter? Why did he already feel bad about himself in his own house?

  ‘Rachel brought a letter just this afternoon,’ Sam said. ‘She wanted to make sure you got it as soon as you got back. It’s on your bed.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Talk tomorrow.’

  ‘Talk tomorrow.’

  ‘Hello.’ Ellen walked down the stairs in that white silky dressing gown, Joe thought, like somebody in a film. She smiled shyly and gave him a quick light peck on the cheek. Sam nipped into the bar for a packet of cigarettes.

&nbs
p; ‘You’ll have to have some tea,’ she said and led them into the kitchen. She looked at him intently and Joe felt the burn of her gaze. ‘You need a haircut,’ she said. ‘And,’ she turned to Joe, another smile, an order, ‘your dad will want to know about Paris.’

  There was Rachel’s letter. He could let it lie in his mind, he thought, enjoy it twice. Once thinking about it, a second time reading it.

  ‘What’s the best thing you saw?’ Sam did not offer him a cigarette.

  ‘Third degree now, Joe,’ said Ellen from the kitchen, ‘just give in.’ Joe smiled at the raincoated figure on the seat opposite. ‘You look funny dressed like that,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking of turning it into an act.’

  ‘Maybe Notre Dame,’ Joe began, wanting to keep Van Gogh and Rodin to himself until he had talked to Rachel about them, ‘especially the front of it.’

  Ellen sat and watched them both. Said little. It was good to have him back.

  An hour or so later he unpacked sufficiently so that he need do nothing after reading the letter. It was nice and odd to be back in the old, narrow little bedroom, the books still neatly on their shelves.

  ‘Dear Joe,

  ‘I’ve thought about this a lot but I have to say it. I want you to get it now, as soon as you come back. A few days after you went away I was sent to Carlisle for an attachment. To cut a long story short, I don’t know how to put this, but I have taken up with somebody. He’s older than you and I’ve gone out with him once or twice in Carlisle. I need to think things over. I really am sorry. We’ve had really great times and I know I said things etc. But times change, maybe you being away gave me time to think about myself a bit more. I really am sorry, Joe. Love. Rachel.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  He found Rachel in the second bank. At the first he had been told that someone on an attachment would be in their main branch and he walked in just before 10 a.m., less than half an hour after it had opened. Without noticing he had caught some confidence in Paris, he was lighter on his feet, there was no hesitation about him. It was a warm morning and he wore a fresh white shirt and the dark trousers that went with the sports jacket. The present had looked too obviously like a present, it had taken the artist an age to wrap it and so Joe carried it in a brown paper bag.

  ‘Can I speak to Rachel Wardlow, please?’

  The heavily spectacled man in the dandruffed double-breasted pinstriped jacket was tempted to send him away but Joe’s unconcealed determination and the sense which came from him that he had every right to see her made the man smile. Besides he was not too fond of Garry, the bank’s spoiled Casanova, who had taken her up. She looked a decent girl, and this one looked the right part as her boyfriend.

  ‘Rather irregular,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  There was one transaction going on, and two clerks working behind the tellers. Usually even that small audience would have set off a jangle of self-consciousness and general awkwardness in Joe. Now he did not notice.

  Rachel came through the half-glassed door, reluctant, head lowered, hair half covering her face, that blue dress which used to be best and, when she looked up, she took his breath away.

  He just stood, silent, looking at her with hungry urgency.

  ‘Did you have a good time?’ she whispered.

  ‘I wrote.’

  ‘You seemed to be having a good time.’

  Joe wanted to take her away. He wanted to reach across the counter between them and kiss her, hold her, have her back. He had never seen her looking so good: the word beautiful struggled to surface. He wanted to ask her about this man. He ought to confess about the strip club, that was probably why God had got his revenge, but he would never confess. He just wanted it not to have happened.

  ‘Can’t we talk?’

  ‘Not here.’ Her whispering had edge. ‘Not now.’

  ‘What time do you finish?’

  She looked flustered.

  ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  ‘Don’t wait outside.’

  ‘Where’ll we meet, then?’

  She looked at him directly for the first time and a smile threatened, perhaps a memory. Joe was standing his ground.

  ‘Burton’s Corner,’ she said, ‘half past twelve.’

  ‘Right.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got a present.’ He swung up the carrier bag and it clonked against the counter.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You might not like it.’

  ‘You have to go now, Joe.’

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’

  ‘You have to go.’

  The dandruffed teller coughed to second her motion. He had played fair. He smiled at the young man, the smile of dismissal. Joe understood.

  ‘Burton’s Corner. Half past twelve.’

  He went out quickly with his brown paper bag. Rachel said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Webster.’

  ‘He seems a very personable young man, Rachel.’

  ‘He is,’ she muttered and went back into the back office. Garry did not even look up.

  Part of the new Joe considered that he ought to spend the two hours in Carlisle Cathedral which he had never explored properly, or in the museum section of Tullie House, or even at the Castle which his father had spoken of but he had never visited. That part was trampled down within seconds. Joe walked the streets. He traipsed all over Carlisle, over the Viaduct, into Denton Holme, back into the city, down Warwick Road to Brunton Park, back up by the alleys he used as a boy going to the football, down Scotch Street, back up by Fisher Street. He tried to pretend he was doing some sort of research in case anyone wondered why this person with a carrier bag was pounding around Carlisle so relentlessly on a sunny summer morning, and now and then he stopped and looked at street names as if thoughtfully.

  What he really wanted was one of those Parisian pavement cafés where he could sit and have a coffee, a cognac and a glass of water and read a paper and watch the world go by, let others’ agitation soothe his own. He bought the paper. The best he could do for a café was the tea rooms on the first floor of an old-established ladies’ clothes shop. It was full of women having clatter-cupped tea and scones. The coffee was awful. He gulped it and went back on the tramp.

  He tried to work out where they could go. They could not chance a pub. Rachel was still not eighteen and they would not be able to get away with it in Carlisle. Tea rooms were out. The only open ground he knew of was beyond the Castle, quite a walk, and he sensed that like himself Rachel wanted to engage immediately. Standing in the doorway of a closed shop would be practical but it was not attractive.

  ‘Well go to the railway station,’ Rachel said. ‘All we have to do is to buy a platform ticket and find a bench. People are used to people sitting and talking at a station,’

  The bench she found was on Platform Four at the opposite end of the station from where the Wigton train docked.

  ‘Here,’ he said, the moment they sat down. He bundled the carrier bag into her lap. He saw now that she was wearing high heels as well.

  ‘I don’t think I should take it.’

  ‘I’ll just throw it away if you don’t.’

  She sought it in the large brown bag and then undid it carefully. When it was revealed, Joe was proud of it. It shone. It was big. ‘It’s … gorgeous!’

  Rachel put it on. It swathed around her wrist, its curvaceous shape, exotic, bold, bringing out the same qualities in Rachel. She pushed out her arm and admired it.

  ‘It’s,’ she struggled for a moment, ‘one of a kind, isn’t it?’

  ‘An artist made it.’

  ‘It’s really French.’

  ‘In Montmartre. Toulouse Lautrec used to do his painting in Montmartre.’

  She darted a quick kiss on his cheek. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So I don’t have to throw it away?’

  ‘No.’ She smiled and admired it again. ‘I bet nobody round here’s got one like this.’

  Joe felt grateful and he relaxed, spread out both arms
along the back of the bench, one of them inevitably going around Rachel’s shoulders. He breathed in deeply: he could wait no longer.

  ‘Have you and him done anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Joe!’ She focused on it. ‘Since you want to know, we kiss and he wants to go further but I won’t let him.’

  Kissing was bad enough but the rest was good news and people kissed people they were not going with in games at parties. There was a great deal to be relieved about. Now he would go very slowly and carefully, even nonchalantly.

  ‘Where are you going tonight, then?’ The words rattled out.

  Rachel would not be interrogated.

  ‘I suppose it’s with him, is it?’

  She looked at the bangle. Was it rather too flashy?

  ‘Who is he anyway?’

  Joe was growing more angry and could be ignored no longer.

  ‘We’re going to a social at Carlisle Tennis Club,’ she said. ‘He’s very good at tennis.’

  ‘Anybody can be good at tennis.’ Again Rachel bit her lip.

  ‘We could go to the County,’ he said. ‘It’s bound to be better than a social at a tennis club.’

  ‘I’ve promised.’

  ‘What about me?’

  The question, forlorn, essential, raw, eternal, rang to the glass roof of the Victorian station, outcrying the clacking of train wheels, the shrill of the whistle - what about me?

  ‘We’ve been going out for nearly two years, Joe.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘I’ve never been out with anybody else. The village boys, before you, that was just a few of us walking around the village together. I’ve never been with anybody else ever.’

  ‘Nearly two years is good,’ Joe said. ‘We’ve stuck at it.’

  ‘When you were away -’

  ‘I’m back now.’

  ‘I started to think about it. Then Garry -’

  ‘Garry!’

  ‘Asked me out for a drink. He’s got this little sports car. We go to a pub in the village he lives in, nothing like our villages, it’s,’ she paused, ‘a moneyed village.’