by Melvyn Bragg
‘I suppose they might be rather stuck up about it at Oxford,’ said Mary. ‘Archie’s at Manchester. They love pop music. They seem much less stuck up there.’
‘But you don’t wish you’d gone there, do you?’ Joe was anxious that Oxford remain top, remain worth it.
‘I find Oxford rather too pleased with itself,’ said Mary, her calm manner now impressing itself hypnotically on Joe. He would love to possess that calm. How did you achieve that tranquil aura? ‘Altogether,’ she emphasised, ‘too pleased with itself.’
Criticism! Of Oxford. He held his breath.
‘But one meets some good people,’ she said, ‘don’t you agree?’
‘Oh yes.’ He told her about James, about Roderick, about the unexpectedness of zoologist Bob, about Brian the genius from Balliol. She listened patiently and it was only when he clocked the willed smiling patience in her that Joe stopped.
‘We must all meet up in the vac,’ she said and raised up Zhivago. ‘Isn’t it dreadful what the Russians are doing to Pasternak?’
But she was reading and wanted no discussion.
Joe walked slowly up King Street, past the Fountain and into the High Street, past St. Mary’s, the school beyond, and down Proctor’s Row past the Auction, into Church Street, back along Water Street and Birdcage Walk, down to the Tenters, back past Vinegar Hill, nodded at everyone, stopped to talk here and there, sought and found morsels of gossip, wove in and out of the alleyways, ambled into the Crofts, back past the Quaker Meeting House, making absolutely sure it was all still there, now and then unconsciously reaching out to touch the sandstone walls, and finally to Alan’s shop where he would wait until Rachel had her break - see her for the first time for twenty-seven days. All was well.
‘Now tell me the truth,’ she said as soon as she came into the new room, ‘what do you really think of it?’
Ellen had planned this moment with some care. Sam was downstairs getting on with the morning’s work. She had left Joe alone after giving him breakfast and he was wallowing in being home, relishing the privacy, the poached egg, the unlimited toast.
She sat down at the table opposite him. He looked around the new room determined to please.
‘It’s great,’ he said, and meant it, and yet.
‘Do you really mean that?’ Her delight was only very slightly shadowed - she had caught the merest scent of his doubt. He in his turn sensed that and chased it away.
‘It’s terrific,’ he said with conviction. Ellen nodded, smiled, poured herself a cup of tea.
The parlour had now become a kitchen and sitting room combined. The sink unit and cooker in one corner. The dining table next to the window overlooked Market Hill. A green sofa and two perfectly matching armchairs embraced the electric fire. A glass fronted cabinet for show: a small bookcase, and cupboards under and around the sink for cooking and utensils.
‘Everything G-Plan,’ said Ellen, ‘everything modern.’
‘It all fits in,’ said Joe, trying his best. ‘It all matches up.’
‘I should’ve done it years ago.’
‘But you have to come up and down stairs.’
‘Keeps you fit.’ She sipped and glanced at the clock. Sadie must not feel abandoned. ‘Sure?’
‘It really is. Great.’
‘Good.’ She stood up, hovered for a moment and then came over to give him a hurried kiss on his forehead. ‘Nice to have you back.’
Alone again but now without the deep relish in it. Had he lied? He did like the new kitchen. He was even proud of it. It was amazing how much was in it and yet so compact. It was smart. It was modern. Yet there was a fidget in his mind. Too smart? He was developing the knowledge that it was, in some unfathomable way, better to cultivate a liking for the old, the used, the faded, even the battered grandeur of his rooms and the rooms of others at Oxford. How did the G-Plan fit that?
Downstairs to help, waylaid by Sadie.
‘Your mam’s pleased you like it,’ she said, loudly as ever. ‘But you couldn’t not. I told her. It’s a palace up there.’
‘It is,’ said Joe, stamping on the demons. ‘It’s lovely.’
He noticed as he had done on the previous morning that Sadie’s accent was very broad. He liked it. He liked everything about Sadie. But he could not help noticing how broad it was and he wished he did not.
‘Hey. Remember you asked me about gossip yesterday morning? Two of them’s been sent down for pinching dynamite from the factory to blow up the becks for fish!’ She gave the names.
‘The usual suspects,’ said Joe.
‘And there’s rats down the lonning up Longthwaite where they have the allotments. The council says they’ll chuck the men off the allotments if they don’t get rid of the rats but everybody knows the rats comes because of the council men tipping the rubbish further down because the council won’t make the rubbish dump up Kirkland bigger. There’s always been allotments down Longthwaite. You should’ve kept your old haircut, Joe. It was smarter. You haven’t lost yourself, have you Joe?’ She looked at him keenly and Joe felt uncomfortable.
Joe brought up a couple of crates but it was midweek and the shelves needed little replenishment. It was good to be back behind the bar with Sam, but Joe was nervous. Perhaps old fears had returned, his father’s thick white muscles like weapons bulged under the rolled up sleeves, the unflinching blue eyes.
Sam had to make an effort to hold back. What had they talked about in Oxford? What were they like? Are you keeping up? Is the competition too hard? What’s it really like, this Oxford? How do you find them? How do they find you? Above all, what do you talk about?
‘Still smoke?’ He offered a cigarette.
‘I pipe now,’ he said, taking the cigarette. ‘But thanks. Now and then.’
‘I tried a pipe in the army. Too fussy for me.’ He lit both the cigarettes and as he leaned forward, elbows on the counter, gazing towards the window, Joe was moved. He had seen his father there so many times, wreathed in smoke, adrift, seemingly contented, a man on his own.
‘There’s a lot of talk about Eoka,’ said Joe. ‘Some of them did National Service in Cyprus.’
‘We’ll clear them out,’ Sam said.
‘Some of them say that you’ll never beat terrorism when the native population’s behind it.’
‘We beat it in Malaya,’ Sam said, ‘you can always beat it if you’ve a mind to.’
‘But look at Israel. When is it terrorism and when is it people determined to get their rights and be free?’
‘That’s politics,’ said Sam, crisply, turning to him now. ‘I’m talking about the army. If the politicians leave you alone after the decision’s made, you can clear it out and our lads will clear it out in Cyprus if they’ll leave them be.’
‘How can you leave politics out of it?’
‘There’s a point where politics has to end and action has to start. If you mix the two up you just get a shambles like Suez.’
‘I’m glad they got mixed up over Suez,’ Joe said, rather heatedly, ‘we were on the wrong track.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Sam. ‘Have they got you more interested in politics, then?’
‘No.’ Joe did not reveal his funk after the visit to the Union. ‘Not any more than I was already. There’s an Oxford undergraduate just been elected for Parliament in Aberdeen. He’s only twenty-three.’
‘Stiff competition.’ Sam smiled. ‘I think that Berlin’s where the real trouble will start. And not Germany’s fault this time.’
Joe was about to leave to meet Rachel in her break. Sam said, ‘Anything I should be reading?’
‘I’ve got a novel a friend of mine recommended. It’s just come out. I haven’t read it myself yet. I’ll go upstairs and get it for you.’
Joe was convinced that Colin had been waiting at the top of Market Hill for some time: it felt like an ambush. Colin was carrying a brown suede briefcase and a rolled up umbrella.
‘Thought I’d forget, didn’t you?’ He held th
em out at arm’s length. ‘They’ll have to do for Christmas as well.’
‘Thanks.’ He knew immediately that the briefcase would not work. ‘That’s really, thanks, Colin.’
‘The briefcase,’ Colin said, ‘I daren’t tell you. Top notch. Arm and a leg. But you’re worth it.’
And for a brief moment, as Colin’s eyes, so like Ellen’s, focused on him with such pride and affection, Joe wished that it could be different with Colin, that he could like him, that Sam could take him back.
‘Some of them thinks you’re a traitor to Wigton, you know,’ said Colin, ‘but I tell them, that lad has always wanted to get out of Wigton and why shouldn’t he? So would you if you had the brains.’
‘But I like Wigton. I don’t want to get out of it.’
‘You don’t have to pretend with me,’ Colin said. ‘I can see through you, remember. I’ll walk up street with you.’ Which he did, tugging Joe to a stop as often as he could, introducing him to people he knew so well, ‘making sure,’ he whispered in a slant-mouthed aside, ‘that they know you’re not stuck up. But the way you’re talking sometimes - watch it.’ The new umbrella felt like certain proof of betrayal.
‘But it isn’t even raining,’ Rachel said.
Colin had surrendered him to the bank and then bowed out with the words, ‘Remember. I’m the best pal you’ll have.’
‘And what are you going to do with a suede briefcase in Oxford?’
He asked Rachel to carry the briefcase to the new coffee bar behind the cinema, but she refused.
There was a jukebox, shiny, chrome-covered, flash, attention-claiming, irresistible. Joe fed it with his own hunger: not only Elvis, but the Everly Brothers, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine, Little Richard, Doris Day, Buddy Holly.
‘Anybody would think you were a millionaire,’ Rachel said, but she too was happy to be submerged in the sound, stir the milky coffee, smoke the cigarettes, and look at Joe, the long college scarf snaking proudly around his neck. He beamed at her, she thought, just as he had done that time beside the tennis courts when they first met at school.
‘Well?’ said Sam, putting aside the new novel rather reluctantly.
They still spent the last hour in the old kitchen.
‘He’s different,’ Ellen said, just as reluctantly turning from the dying fire, ‘it’ll never be the same - how could it be? But I like him back.’
‘I think he’s been jarred,’ Sam said. Ellen’s dreaming expression concentrated itself. ‘He’ll just have to get through it.’ Yet Sam was not wholly sure he would succeed: maybe that nervy business when he was younger had shown up flaws that would always drag him down.
‘I know what to get him for Christmas,’ she said.
Sam waited.
‘I duffel coat: they all have duffel coats. With those little wooden toggles.’
Ellen laughed.
‘They’re funny, aren’t they, those little toggles.’
As Christmas Day approached, Joe drifted around the town alone while Rachel worked, Alan worked, John at the factory, Edward now apprenticed at Moore’s garage. He recognised but could not describe a different sort of solitude in himself, unthreatening but questioning. He felt too favoured.
He was remotely aware that he was playing at being a student he had given up using ‘undergraduate’ in Wigton. He was this altogether different person now, wasn’t he? Nineteen years old and no job: living on scholarship money and help from his parents but still the means to smoke and go out. Most of all, though, he was a student. People became soldiers and different when they went into the army. People become miners not boys when they went down the pits. A student meant - what did it mean? You could no longer behave like a schoolboy. You were as yet of no use. You were tolerated.
Students were supposed to study and to think. That was the main part of it. The more they thought the better they were. You were supposed to make yourself think and about everything, not just wait for it to happen. Passing exams, he saw now, with mixed feelings, was just the start of it. Students were there to think things through and with his college scarf layered around his neck he tried to look the part. But how did you prove it? How could you prove you were thinking and had changed into a real student? Still not got a job yet, said the men around the Fountain, still no job, Joe?
Joe was not invited to Brenda’s party but two days afterwards he went with Rachel to a party in the grander home of Mary. Rachel drove them in Isaac’s unbegrudged car and nodded happily to Joe as she pulled up in the drive of the small Georgian manor which dominated the deeply secluded hamlet.
‘This’ll show Brenda,’ Rachel said.
Brenda came across the room to them as soon as they came in.
‘I didn’t know you knew Mary and Archie.’
Joe smiled. Without looking at Rachel, Brenda said,
‘And good to see you again too, Rachel.’
‘What did you smile at her for?’ After Brenda had moved elsewhere.
‘What else could I do?’
‘Ignore her. Just ignore her. She ignored us. We weren’t good enough for her party! I wanted to kick her ankles.’ Joe liked her saying that.
‘If she asks you for a dance - and she’ll have the face for it - say no or I’m off and you can walk home.’ That was not so comfortable.
‘I mean it.’ He knew it. ‘Smiling all over you!’ Which cheered him up again.
‘I read a poem of yours,’ Peter said, ‘in the school magazine. My sister brought it back. I can’t remember it. But I liked it. I paint.’ He held out his hand. ‘I was at the school many moons before you. And “hello” to you too! You’re -?’
‘Rachel. I’m with Joe.’
‘I can see that, Rachel. Lucky Joe. You’re the perfect artist’s model.’
Rachel grimaced, but as the evening went on she forgave him. ‘You couldn’t not,’ she said. Peter Carson - in his last year at St. Martin’s College of Art in London - was very tall, very thin, longhaired, twirling moustached, a well cut brown velvet jacket, cavalry twill trousers so tight he could have ridden in them and did, and glistening brown boots made in Wigton for him by Ivinson the saddler.
Joe realised that although Peter was in another age group, another circle, and one of the better off, the man had been at the edge of his Wigton vision for years. And he was an artist!
‘What do you think of Van Gogh?’ Joe asked. ‘I’ve seen his real ones in Paris.’
‘I like his letters,’ said Peter. It’s moved on to De Kooning now. More Abstract-Expressionism.’
‘But Van Gogh’s great, isn’t he? The colours and the way you can see what he’s feeling - just by looking at a chair!’
‘I’ll grant you that,’ said Peter. He smiled, at Rachel, it seemed to Joe, and his jealousy shot into her, an unwelcome warning. ‘But things move on.’
‘Not if you’re good enough,’ said Joe. ‘What about Leonardo da Vinci?’
‘The thing is,’ Peter said, ‘art’s a mug’s game but drawing is all I can do. I’d like to draw you,’ he said to Rachel, exercising his pantomime wolfish smile.
‘No,’ she said, ‘certainly not.’ And was annoyed with herself because she thought she had to say this to appease Joe.
‘You then?’
Joe was flattered. Peter rolled another cigarette in dark brown paper.
There was about the evening something both calm and sure which eventually spread contentment. Joe could not have analysed or even guessed how it came about. The Quaker annual family party for Mary and Archie was spacious and free, Joe felt the fine house was his for the evening; he liked everything about it - the simple furniture, the few landscape paintings, the ease of everyone. If ever he had a house he wanted it to be like this and he would give parties just like this.
Towards the end he tried to explain existentialism to Archie and refused to give up even when it was clear to Rachel that he was tying himself into knots and Archie knew much more about it. It took an effort from her not to refer to it on t
he way back.
It was a party which led to other parties that Christmas. Peter’s own, a much smaller affair which Rachel thought was ‘a bit weird’ and which Joe hoped qualified as a Beat generation party in which case, his first. There they met William Anderson who was training to be an architect. His family had just bought a double-fronted sandstone mansion near the cemetery overlooking Wigton and Joe and Rachel were invited as were other younger people to the house-warming.
‘And Brenda got invited to neither of them,’ said Rachel.
‘That’s understandable,’ said Joe, hypocritically.
‘It is! It’s very understandable!’
‘How do you know she wasn’t invited?’
‘Brenda? Don’t be so soft. Sometimes you are soft, Joe.’
Alan gave him a lift on the motorbike. The dance was in Rachel’s village.
‘Who’s that?’ Joe demanded.
‘Robert Donaldson. Michael’s brother.’
‘He’s coming over to ask you for a dance.’
‘You have this dance with Linda. She’ll like that. You both will and Michael won’t mind. He can’t dance anyway.’
It was a slow foxtrot which allowed you to dance close to someone even if you were not going with them because the nature of the dance required it. Robert and Rachel did little more than shuffle. Robert was taller than Joe was, and handsome, the blond, curly hair already freed of the combing, tumbled about his strong weathered face. Rachel, there was no doubt of this, was being held very close.
Linda knew exactly what was going on. Joe’s jealousy had always convinced her how much he loved Rachel as she had several times reassured a perturbed Rachel. ‘Don’t bother about Robert,’ she said, staring through him, glassily, ‘he’s got a girlfriend but she broke her wrist this morning. He dances like that with everybody when he’s had a few.’ She smiled: the effect of the poison lessened a little. They tried one or two bolder manoeuvres.
