by Melvyn Bragg
The AYPA on Wednesday. Nothing he could hold on to: a talk about tenors by Malcolm’s father who said that Gigli was much better than Joe’s proposed champion, Mario Lanza - an opinion that had angered Joe and upset him as if he had been personally insulted. Many of the others had laughed, of course, and they nodded as the man said that Gigli (whom neither Joe nor the others had ever heard of) was so much purer, immeasurably finer, infinitely greater than the rough peasant overstrained voice of the former Neapolitan waiter. Joe felt stabbed and now in the bed, as the customers were turned out into the street, he blushed again but this time in fury for there was in him that which recognised the attack on Mario Lanza as a slapdown of himself. Mario Lanza belonged to him. He even thought he could do a fair imitation of ‘Be My Love’. Reedy Gigli weedy Gigli! But that got him nowhere.
Choir practice, piano lesson - increasingly resented now, the relentless preparation for exams, Miss Snaith annoyed with his lessening of interest, his obvious lack of practice, his withdrawal.
Nothing there. The pub was empty of customers.
He could go down and help his father at the till but there was a real hint of drowsiness and maybe if he stayed … He tried the fortress again but saw the swaying breasts of Dan’s mother and the betrayal by Alan started up again. What did John Cobb feel like when his speedboat disintegrated on Loch Ness and he was dragged down and down into that fearful bottomless loch? Joe was proud of John Cobb, his world land-speed record, being British and best at everything, trying for the world water-speed record as well, but what was it like? The water would be terribly cold, the history master had said, and most likely he was dead before he drowned but what if he drowned? Joe tried to imagine drowning; he aped it sometimes in the baths - or would the H-bomb be worse? They had meant to leave him out. Malcolm’s father had just laughed at him about Mario Lanza. He was not supposed to look hotly at those breasts.
Jack Ack went out of the front door - the others would go soon: his mam and dad would be upstairs, soon; he would be safe then, he would sleep then. It never happened then.
But it came. What was him vanished into the light. Only that faint, small light kept him alive. There was nothing inside him. He could not even pray. The fear was terrible.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was difficult to get anyone to come out and play on a Sunday. His friends, his gang, whatever their church, were locked into the rule of a joyless, house-bound Sabbath. Shops were tight shut, games forbidden, communal pleasure confined to special zones - Silloth in summer - even the pubs were different, better-behaved, careful not to antagonise the gods of the day.
Joe had been at the altar for Holy Communion, made two mistakes, and later much more happily sung in the comfort of the choir for the Eucharist. Ellen had made his dinner before she went down to the pub. The quiz occupied Sam and she was needed to run the other rooms. Joe ate alone and quickly, got out his bike, stuffed his yellow polo-neck in the saddle-bag and set off the eight miles west for the mining town of Aspatria.
Annie Fleming lived there.
After that day in 3L she had been friendly to him, she had even sought him out once or twice and lolled against the railings while he tried to unnumb his tongue. And earlier in the week, in a mixed swimming lesson, she had let herself be life-saved by him when they were practising and his hands had slithered across the bubbled bathing costume on to breasts, real breasts, his first, so strangely soft, stirring excitement in a body otherwise jellified with the sin and the giddiness of the encounter. It had made him feel bold for the first time for months and he towed her backwards and forwards across the pool until he could no longer disobey the whistle. He climbed out quivering from the contact and amok with further expectation as Annie gave him a sly complicit knee-trembling smile.
He wanted more.
It was a bleak northern early-autumn day and the wind was in his face on the way there. He counted seven cars, all black. There were two cyclists, together, going in the opposite direction. The best bit was the swoop down the hill beyond Waverton and the hard pedal up the hill that faced it. The worst was the stretch alongside Brayton woods In which a man had recently been found hanged. He had used his army belt. He went past it as fast as he could, in third gear, mouthing ‘Be My Love’ to keep up his spirits.
She had told him she lived in a village a mile or so from the main town and he soon spotted the sign. On the way he took off his green school jersey and arrayed himself in the yellow polo-neck.
He had not told her, not even hinted, that he was coming.
The village was eight short terraces of small houses built for miners. It stood beside an extinct pit. Joe circled it like a lone Indian scout warñy spying on an encampment of covered wagons. There were some boys playing on a slag heap but they were too young to approach.
He knew neither the street nor the number.
If he willed it enough, she would appear. That was his conviction. He did not pray. Prayer helped elsewhere, but not for this, which was a bad feeling. But he let loose his longing for Annie, particularly her soft as snow breasts underneath the bubbled costume. She would pick up his signal, he thought. She would stroll out, just as he was passing her house, just like that.
He entered the settlement and cycled up and down the bare, narrow streets. Occasionally a small boy raced from house to house. Twice he saw women walking, huddled around folded arms, heads bent.
It took some time before hopelessness set in. He circled and then swung into the streets, wove patterns between the terraces, slowed down to peer into windows, became convinced that next time, next time, if he sped up or went around three times quickly without looking into windows, or shut his eyes while free-wheeling down a street then - she would appear.
A boy in black drainpipe trousers walked in front of him forcing him to stop. The boy was some years older than Joe. His hair was well greased in a wave of a quiff. Despite the chill day he wore an open-necked shirt, sleeves rolled up, right forearm tattooed with an anchor. He nodded to Joe but the nod was not friendly. ‘Can I help you, pal?’
Joe shook his head. He was straddled over the cross-bar, both feet on the ground. He felt that he had been captured for a crime.
‘What you after?’
'I’m looking for somebody.’
‘I’ll do.’
The boy was clearly encouraged by Joe’s confusion and in no doubt of his physical superiority. He enjoyed the silence.
‘You could get off that bike for a start, pal’
Joe gripped the handlebars tightly. Why was this happening?
'I came to meet somebody,’ he said. ‘But they don’t seem to be here.’
This time it was the older boy who nodded, unwillingly convinced. 'I don’t know you, do I?’
‘I’m from Wigton.’
‘You’d better set off back there, then, hadn’t you, pal?’ He gave a last hard look and gestured a dismissal. Joe felt grateful. ‘Canary!’ the boy yelled, and the word bulleted after him.
Joe did not look back until he was well away and when he did the previously seductive settlement of terraced cottages seemed a hostile encampment stuck sullenly on the bare landscape hugged into its own.
Thoughts of Annie Fleming had gone: fear had driven out the pricklings of juvenile lust.
There was no song in his head as he pedalled with the wind behind him, heavy rainclouds coming in from the sea to the west, the road past the hanged man’s wood entirely forsaken. The clouds seemed to be pursuing him.
The swoop down the hill and the impetus up the matching hill lifted him a little bit but the pressure on his spirits was growing heavy.
He got a puncture on the back wheel. He took out his kit and turned the bike upside down then realised he needed a spoon to lever off the tyre. And a bowl of water. The clouds darkened the fields all around him.
Wigton was about four miles away. He got on the bike and began to pedal but the grind of the back wheel told him that he was doing damage. You did not ride on a f
lat tyre, it ruined the bike. He dismounted and began to push it, standing on the pedal now and then in his urgency, using it like a scooter.
It was as if the big clouds were closing in, bearing down on him, isolating him. He heard his panting breath and heard the sound of his own fear. The road ahead was flat and straight and empty. He was cold.
He mounted the bike once again and felt relief in the flow of speed but the grind of the back wheel, the damage being done, too much. Once again he dismounted. Once again he used it as a scooter between times of running.
The heavy rainclouds blotted out sound. A silence encircled him. Silence and cold. As if there were no one else alive, anywhere in the world. This cold silence threatened to make him stop stiff still but if he did he did not know what would happen. He heard his breath, that was all, his breath panting in panic panicking him more. One foot on the pedal. Back on to the bike. Never mind. The cold silence wrapped round him so tightly now and what was he? What was this thing that was him, that was solid with fear and the strangeness of this pressure of isolation?
There was a cottage. A yellow light through the curtains. He could stop and ask for a spoon. Even for a basin of water. But what would happen if he stopped? What was this thing? He dare not stop. He wanted to knock on the door. He wanted somebody to break this spell. He dare not stop.
Now he rode the bike.
The wind pushed at his back.
Big spots of rain. He could not cry.
It was so strange. It was so frightening and strange. He would not get back. Even when he entered Wigton it was different. He peered at the houses as if checking they were really there. He got home, he changed, he went to Evensong and in the concord of the choir the fragment of himself was eased, began to grow back but fearful still as he walked the long way, down the lighted main streets, fearful of what he knew could be waiting for him when he went to his bed.
‘Is Alan in?’
‘What for?’
Joe avoided her eyes. 'I just want to ask him something.’
‘We’re having our dinner.’
The door was a quarter open. The stairs behind beckoned him to run away.
'I’ll wait then.’
‘He’s got an invitation for this afternoon.’
Joe smarted at the kick. ‘I’ll wait at the bottom of the stairs.’
Alan’s mother shut the door.
Ellen’s background, that queer brother of hers, the common pub, the boy’s too obvious longing to be with Alan, not right.
He waited.
He sat on the bottom stair, which looked into the narrow twist of the ancient Church Street which fissured the middle of the town they said, proudly, 'like a dog’s hind leg’. She could have invited him in. He delivered papers for no pay, most Saturdays now, the pink sports edition, at the end of the afternoon, winging around the town with Alan, bike to bike, seeing how much time they could clip off their record. Joe felt stabbed by her dislike. It was unfair. It was unfathomable to him. He was always on his best behaviour. But Alan’s mother could never wait to see the back of him. He sat in a huddle, unjustly unhappy.
But Alan came down and for a moment the misery evaporated. Alan was almost precisely Joe’s height, his hair fair to Joe’s sandy, his face high cheekboned, defined, to Joe’s round endeavour, both of them fit, Alan the runner, Joe the swimmer, Joe doing Alan’s homework, close even within the gang.
‘I can’t come,’ Alan said, apology in his tone.
They had agreed to go on a long bike ride together on this first day of half-term.
‘You’ve had an invitation.’
‘Who told you?’
'It’s Malcolm, isn’t it?’
‘How do you know?’
‘He’s asked you to go out with him in his dad’s new car.’
‘Yes.’ Alan gave in, used to Joe divining his moods or plans.
‘But you promised.’
Alan nodded. His mother had told him to go with Malcolm. It was a real treat, she said, not given to just anybody.
‘You promised.’
The plangency of the repeated word. Joe lashed out, punched Alan hard on the arm, punched him again, turned away, grabbed his bike from the wall, ran with it before slinging himself on to the saddle.
He headed for home, for the loft, to be with the budgerigars.
They were disturbed by his arrival and shifted from perch to perch. The boy stood still, looked intensely on them as if trying to extract the secret of their lightness, their appearance, even in agitation, of joy. They were so free, no guilt. So light. Colin had given him two blues but he could not make out which they were. They could be any of those dapper little coloured pet birds, painted sparrows, ordinary little things made extraordinary through the flash of high soft colour. Joe watched them for some minutes but even that troupe of innocence and colour did not uncramp the tightness in his chest.
In the corner on a stool were the boxing gloves. Colin had declared that he would turn the stables downstairs into a gym and really train up Joe for the job. He would get a heavy punchbag and a speed ball, he would get weights and a skipping rope, he would clear out the two stalls still remaining from the old days for the horses and Wigton’s first gym would be set up. You never knew, he could train others besides Joe. Wigton lads could fight as well as anybody else. Better.
His enthusiasm had overcome Joe’s deep reservations, seemed to go some way to repairing the fracture in him. The neglected gloves had come out of the bottom of his wardrobe and there they sat, in the corner, on the stool like a boxer waiting for the bell to go.
Joe pulled on a pair. He shadow-boxed but even that made the budgies tremulous so he went down the ladder into the stable, the fusty, aimlessly cluttered place, always cold, the stalls for the long-lost horses littered with empty crates.
The boy began to box. On his own he was full of style. The thorn of Alan pricked him on. His shoulders moved, rolled, easily, he ducked, he threw a couple of jabs with his left and then a right cross, step back, he came nearer the mottled wall, stone protuberant, unyielding. He hit the wall. Once, twice, then again, the old one-two, into the body, work it, work it, beginning to sweat, hearing his. breath but not afraid, not with the gloves on, not when he was hitting the wall, hit, hit, hit the wall, stand close, he had the little black boy screaming in his head, in his sights, slip that punch, sidestep, left, left, and then into the stomach, that slowed them down, that took it out of them, his breath sounded harsh and good, bang, bang, bang, screaming from the horse’s hoofs, slam, slam against the wall, his feet apart, his eyes feeling the sweat flow from his brow, hitting the wall, hitting it, slamming, frenziedly, the obdurate wall.
When he stopped he was heaving in breath. He looked at the gloves. They were cut and battered from the wall. The surface leather had split in some places and the sponginess beneath was revealed, little nicks, little wounds, you could not fight any more with gloves like this, they would cut, it would not be allowed. He took them back up the ladder and returned them to the stool. He sat and watched the beautiful birds, exhausted, waiting.
Colin had been told by Ellen never to take Joe on his motorbike so they met down Burnfoot beside the convent. He had found the boy staring at the budgies and had offered him the treat on the spot. Colin had only had the bike for two weeks. It was an ancient Norton, bought, Colin boasted, for ‘next to nothing’, and he was enraptured by it.
Ellen’s fear was susceptible to no entreaty. It was unlike her to be so openly adamant about risk. Joe must not go on the motorbike. He’s too young. Promise? Colin had nodded solemnly at the injunction, feeling that he was thus marked out as a daredevil, and yet addressed as a responsible grown-up. He was pleased with that.
He had found a pair of old flying goggles in a rummage sale. His trousers were tucked into black Wellingtons. Grace had loaned him a pair of Leonard’s black leather gloves. Joe had been instructed to smuggle out his yellow polo neck to wear over his school jumper. Cold, Colin explained, when it
met speed, just sliced through you.
‘Best to put your arms around me,’ Colin said. 'The real pros use those grips but safer if you put your arms round me. And you’ll be able to feel my rhythm. This is an open-air jet. Don’t give me the jet set! They should try a Norton. Nobody’ll ever beat this bike, Joe, best in the world. Ready?’
Joe got on the pillion rather gingerly. His mind was still submerged in the stables: the boy’s screaming was still in his head; he could see Alan and Malcolm in the back seat of the new car; he had surely ruined one pair of his gloves.
‘Tighter.’
The boy pulled himself closer to the man who twisted around, his face monstered by the goggles, a grin wiping out the lower half of his face.
‘TT!’ he yelled above the explosions of the engine. ‘Wall of Death!’
The bike jerked forward, abruptly, clumsily, and Joe almost fell off. His face bumped into the goggle straps and his nose whiffed the larded Brylcreem. Colin drove cautiously, only beginning to open up when well clear of the town.
Carlisle Bridge was in his sights. Carlisle Bridge was a narrow low-walled railway bridge, which went off the Wigton road at a right angle, and immediately threw another right angle into the Carlisle road. Carlisle Bridge collected more accidents than anywhere else in the county. The approach from both sides was calm and open and then before you knew it, this savage Z-bend was on top of you. Lorries, cars, motorbikes, especially motorbikes, had taken the bridge too fast or had a spot of oil on the road, a slither of rain, a sudden fear of an oncoming vehicle on such a narrow bridge - a young local soldier on leave had crashed his motorbike there less than a month before, thrown over the parapet on to the rails. They spoke of a ‘mangled body’. They spoke yet again of widening the bridge. This bridge was at the quick of Ellen’s anxiety.
