A Son of War

by Melvyn Bragg

  Joe knew the bridge from the upstairs of a bus, when sometimes everyone went ‘Whoa!’ as the bus swayed around, just making it. And he knew it from his bike when he and Alan and some of the others would get up as much speed as they could and swing their bikes to an angle like the motorbike champions in the TT on the Isle of Man, the trick being to make the angle as acute as possible without hitting the deck. He felt Colin open up the throttle as they approached it and a wild mixture of fear and exhilaration whipped through his mind as sharp as the wind in his face.

  ‘Hold tight!’

  Colin opened up yet more as the narrow little bridge came into view. The bushes on either side of the road were still in good leaf and thickly green, the cattle and sheep rushed by, standing still, indifferent and calm.

  ‘Lean to the left! Then switch to the right! Blast off!’

  They beat into the first turn at some speed and Joe felt all that was inside him swoop to the left as he followed Colin’s body and then the near instantaneous switch a little too late, to the right, but they skimmed the far wall, shot across the road into the lush verge, twisted out of that and proceeded at a subdued pace towards Carlisle.

  Joe knew how close they had been. Colin did not turn round. He pulled up in Thursby, a village half-way between the town and the city. He parked the bike against the wall of the school, which stood on a village green of a handsome size. He took off his goggles and walked a few paces, finding a spot isolated enough from the road.

  ‘You’ll have to practise that leaning business, Joe,’ he said. ‘Thing is you lean into the bend, see, lean into the bend, but you have to follow my body to perfection otherwise kaput.’

  Joe nodded, suddenly weak, glad to sit on solid ground. Colin lit up a cigarette and a dreamy look came into his eyes. ‘This has come just too late for me.’ The barest gesture indicated the Norton. ‘I’ve a knack for this, Joe, I can feel it, dead certain. I’ve got the touch. But it’s all money. You have to have the money or know the money men. That’s my flaw.’

  He looked nostalgically at the smoke that came from the cigarette burning between his fingers, as if in that lazy curl of smoke lay the proof of a destiny denied.

  ‘Know what I think?’ He looked at Joe intently. 'I think I’m just going to wait for you to grow up. So we can be real pals. Man to man. You and me. I’m picky, see, and I’ve made up my mind. You and me’s not just related, we could be best pals.’

  Joe smiled but the smile was forced. What about Alan? And the others. But still he smiled and when they stood up and Colin slung his arm around his shoulder as they sauntered back to the bike - a gesture Joe himself so often made freely with Alan - he repressed the tremor it caused.

  On the way back Colin took the bridge steadily, so that Joe could get used to it, he explained when he let him off back at the convent and made him swear not to tell Ellen.

  Although still a touch shaky when he walked from the convent, it was the trace of exhilaration that was imprinted more firmly on Joe’s mind. He went past the pub, into the town. He might bump into someone he knew. There was still light, the clocks had not gone back.

  But the evening town was quiet, even in the yards where gangs collected there was nothing for him. But he did not mind. He went from Church Street to Water Street by way of the pens in the pig market, which supplied a mild frisson of illegality to top up the exhilaration. He ran down the ramp in Harry Moore’s garage, which was not quite as chancy but there were stories of boys being caught.

  Colin was already in the pub. Sam paid him partly in kind: a pint of bitter a day which Colin took as two halves or saved up for a spree. It was an effective way for Sam to defray the unnecessary expense of Colin. Ellen approved because it meant that she could keep an eye on him most nights. When Joe looked into the bar, Colin’s exaggerated ‘Joe! Now where have you been?’ alerted his mam, he could see that, and he blushed and she saw that and she knew, he knew that.

  ‘Joe and me,’ Colin announced to Sam and Ellen, both behind the bar, she ready to take orders for the Darts Room and the kitchen, ‘we’re going to be best pals when he grows up. That right?’

  Joe tried to nod without it being fully confirmed as a nod. This time it was Sam who looked at him. But where Ellen had frowned, his dad only smiled and said, ‘Joe won’t be lost for pals, will you?’ The boy did not know how to receive that: it seemed to mean so much more than the words.

  He went into the back yard to get his bike. This would be a good moment.

  It was still not dark but the few street lamps were lit. He tacked up King Street, into High Street, past the church in which he was a failure at the altar, down Proctor’s Row, and into the narrow lane that wended by the small stream and led to the baths.

  He had not come principally to swim.

  He went into the chlorinated water and the thought of Annie Fleming being life-saved was more vivid than any race. He forced himself to stay until the whistle called them out. He forced himself to wait until he was the last to leave.

  Then he went out and, already feeling a small distant sensation of fear at the back of his throat, he pointed his bike the short way back, the unlit way.

  He followed the riverside path and turned into the hill. Fine for the first bit until he caught the sound of his breath and he stood on the pedals, pressing them harder, even speeding up as he reached the crest of the hill and seemed to pause for a second, looking through the darkening twilight at the gasometer, at the few speckled lights of the town, which seemed so distant and yet were but a couple of minutes away as he kicked down the pedals and shot down the hill, hearing his breath louder now though he was trying not to breathe, past the gasometer and the Tenters cottages, the strangeness beginning to clamp on him again, making for the narrow bridge, which switched across another of the rivers threading through Wigton, too fast, overshot, thudded his leg sickeningly into the wall, managed to twist the handlebars and balance and keep upright, a bad knock, lucky to be wearing long trousers.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Joe walked through the shut-tight Sunday afternoon town trying to conceal his agitation. His mother had pressed his best suit. He wore his school tie. His black shoes glittered as his father had taught him. His hair was straight parted and plastered down with water and Brylcreem. He had washed his face and cleaned his teeth especially. Even his mother had said that he looked presentable. But something could go wrong. He was going to tea at the vicar’s.

  The other three new servers had been and the word was that the vicar was about to cut the new ones down to two and this was the final test. Joe already feared that he had failed. Tea was unnecessary.

  But he plodded heavily up the grey autumn street, enjoying the stiff wind in his face, carrying his school mac neatly folded over his arm because there had been such heavy storms recently, trying to think of anything but himself.

  The vicarage was the most handsome house in the town. Large, white, Georgian, set well back from the road, between the auction and the grammar school, supported by outbuildings, approached along a drive of giant rhododendron bushes, a world of its own.

  Joe knocked too timidly the first time and had to do it again. Already he had lost points.

  ‘Ah, Richardson,’ the vicar himself opened the door, glanced at his watch, ‘early. Never mind. Come in. Come in.’

  He made much of waving Joe aboard as the boy stumbled into the house.

  ‘Follow me.’

  The vicar was not in his cassock. He was not even wearing a jacket. He sported green corduroy trousers and a brown pullover with a hole in one elbow. He strode out and Joe saw a wall of books, paintings of hills, drawings children had done, small coloured carpets on bare floors, a telephone, high ceilings, long windows, a big fireplace, logs. ‘Follow me,’ the vicar said, twice more booming, ‘follow me.’

  ‘This is Joe Richardson,’ he announced, presenting him.

  The three children smiled, it seemed the same smile. Joe knew Alfred, who was almost his age, fro
m the choir which he joined in his holidays from the local boarding-school. The girls were younger, both long-haired, somehow like the illustrations of Alice in Wonderland in the book Mr Scott had given him after he had sung ‘When Johnnie Comes Marching Home’ - disturbingly pretty in a way foreign to him. In the smiles there were questions - who is this one? Isn’t he rather funny? Why is he dressed so smartly when we are happy to be in muddling clothes? Joe blushed.

  ‘Play with him until tea,’ said the vicar, and left.

  Joe was surprised at how untidy the room was. As if a grown-up had never been in it. A busted sofa and two old chairs. A couple of carpets really worn out. Books scattered any old how. A big enviable rocking-horse in front of an empty fireplace. Snakes and ladders not packed away. Two teddy bears on the mantelpiece.

  ‘We were working out how to play Winnie the Pooh,’ Alfred said. ‘For Bernadette.’ He nodded to the smaller of the two girls. ‘Who would you like to be?’

  ‘This is a test,’ said Sarah, the nearest in age, the one who looked most steadily with questions in her eyes, the one he wanted to impress.

  ‘Who’s Winnie the Pooh?’

  The vicar’s children did their best to react politely but their disbelief was undisguised.

  ‘Everybody knows Winnie the Pooh,’ said Bernadette. ‘Everybody in the whole world.’

  Joe sucked on his top lip and held it tight between his teeth.

  ‘How can you not know?’ Sarah’s question sought an answer.

  There was a heat flush beating about him. He had to reply.

  ‘We could play Biggies,’ he said, out of nowhere. ‘Save there are no parts for girls.’

  ‘Girls can be boys in games,’ Sarah announced, and Joe felt he had heard an oracle.

  ‘I’ll be Ginger.’ Alfred sided with Joe and, Joe sensed, came to his rescue. ‘The sofa can be one aeroplane; the chairs can be two other aeroplanes and the Germans can be on the rocking-horse.’

  ‘I’ll be the Germans,’ Joe said, quickly.

  Tea was in the kitchen and the vicar’s wife seemed surprised and, Joe thought, rather dismayed to see him. Her fourth child was just over a year old and restless in a wicker basket affair such as Joe had never seen. The baby looked so sweet that he had wanted to go across and chuck it under the chin but Mrs Elliott had said better to leave her alone and the tone was cold.

  The meal was a poor do, Joe thought. Some crumbly bread on which the vicar spread thin margarine and strawberry jam with lumps of strawberry, which Joe knew he would not like. There were no rock buns or scones but there were toasted teacakes. The centrepiece, much commended by the vicar, was a sponge cake that had collapsed in the middle. This, said the vicar, gave it character.

  There was something Joe could not grasp. Something he knew he was supposed to admire, even to covet, but he conceded it was out of his reach. The best word he could find was a ‘feeling’. A feeling that he was entering a closed order. A feeling that this was the right way to eat tea and the right tea to eat. A feeling that the tea was not important, the talk was important but the talk was family talk, exclusive and teasing. A feeling of plenty even though the table was not groaning, of leisure even though the vicar would have to be getting organised for church quite soon by Joe’s reckoning, a feeling of distinction and difference.

  ‘Joe took the part of the vicar the other week in the balloon game. He put up a very creditable performance.’

  ‘Were you thrown out, Pa?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Afraid so.’

  ‘Why was that?’ She turned her steady gaze on Joe who braced himself.

  'I couldn’t win them over,’ he said. ‘Maybe I didn’t do enough homework on it.’

  ‘Maybe I didn’t do enough homework on it?’

  Sarah took the sentence and the thick local accent and mimicked it perfectly. They all laughed.

  ‘Sarah’s a true mimic,’ her father said.

  ‘Do it again,’ said her mother, with a pleasant smile at Joe.

  The girl obliged. For a wild moment Joe felt the urge to mimic her - to his ear - false-posh accent, but he pulled back. He was soft on her.

  ‘Ten out of ten for trying, though,’ the vicar said. ‘Vicars should probably volunteer to jump out of the balloon.’

  ‘Would you like a slice of this terrible cake?’

  ‘No thank you, missis.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Mummy made it specially,’ said Sarah, with some heat.

  'I'm full,’ Joe said, which was true in the sense that he knew he could eat no more.

  ‘Just the teeniest slice?’

  Joe shook his head. There was a fractional pause, as if a family intake of breath, brief, not impolite, to Joe a clear accusation - but for what reason?

  ‘I’ll have the biggest slice you can cut,’ said the vicar. ‘Yum-yum.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure you don’t want a slice of this cake?’ The vicar’s wife smiled with her mouth but her eyes were hard, and Joe looked and looked away quickly at the woman, knife poised over the collapsed sponge.

  ‘No thanks, missis,’ he muttered.

  The knife came down and slit the cake in two with some force and then the more careful slicing and distributing and noises of major enjoyment, Joe isolated.

  ‘This is the best cake,’ Sarah said, smiling at her mother, ‘that you have ever made.’

  ‘I suspect Joe is used to more professional baking.’

  ‘Yum-yum,’ said Bernadette.

  Alfred left half his cake. Joe stared at the plate.

  ‘Alfred’s excused because he’s unwell,’ Sarah announced, rather loudly.

  ‘Sarah,’ the vicar’s voice was gentle, ‘Joe is our guest.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Joe asked.

  Alfred waved his hands as if making a conjuring pass over the tablecloth. Sarah looked to her mother. ‘We don’t talk about it,’ she said, harshly.

  ‘That’s why they let him come home on Saturday nights.’ Joe knew that Sarah was cross with him yet again, but found some comfort in the vicar’s admonitory glance which subdued her.

  ‘This is where we - you and I, Joe - go to my study. Thank you for a lovely tea, darling.’

  ‘Thank you, Mummy.’ A salute from the children.

  To Joe the study felt holier than the church. After all, there were hundreds of churches. Sometimes he and Alan went into them on their bike rides. But this was the only study he had seen. Books on shelves floor to ceiling, books on the floor, books on the big desk full of drawers, books on the green sofa, glowing rugs on a wooden floor, a Bible as big as a shoe box, piles of paper stacked askew scribbled over, several with paperweights, photographs of Mrs Vicar and Alfred, Sarah, Bernadette and older people framed on the desk, a big globe free standing, which the vicar spun with his finger when he came in and Joe watched the pink of the British Empire appear and reappear like the favourite horse on a roundabout, and candle-holders, many. The vicar was ‘High Church’.

  ‘Make yourself at home.’

  The boy stood, helpless, until a cluttered chair was indicated.

  ‘Just put the magazines on the floor.’

  The vicar flung himself into a deep armchair and lit up. ‘Alfred’s very sensitive,’ he said, abruptly. ‘His mother likes to keep an eye on him.’

  Joe nodded, understandingly.

  ‘We keep it to ourselves.’

  Again the complicit nod: secret safe.

  The vicar seemed annoyed. Joe perched on the edge of the chair, looking up expectantly, as a dolphin to be fed by its keeper, an acolyte trembling to be initiated, a boy desperate for reassurance. He knew what he would say when - as he had done with the others - the vicar asked him what he wanted to be.

  I’m afraid it isn’t working out,’ the vicar said. ‘Sometimes one has to be cruel to be kind.’

  Yet again, Joe nodded. The roof of his mouth quite suddenly dry.

  ‘You’ve tried hard.’ He was looking away, up into the corner of
the room. ‘You’ve done your best. But at the altar itself, when the heavenly host descends, when the bread is made flesh and the wine becomes Christ’s blood, then I need something special.’

  Joe sucked at his teeth to ease his dry throat.

  ‘Mr Mitchinson says he will be glad to have you back full time in the choir.’

  The boy found a voice. ‘So you don’t want me next Sunday early communion? On the roster.’

  ‘I’ll ask Malcolm to do it.’

  Again the understanding, submissive nod.

  He held in his terrible disappointment. He dare not let it go. Where could it go? Who would receive it? He did not want to be a bother to the vicar and knew from the awesome man’s obvious impatience that this was threatening.

  ‘Well,’ the vicar sprang to his feet, ‘not the end of the world, eh? Not even the beginning of the end of the world.’ He picked up a book, a battered copy of a Jennings school story. ‘I thought you might like this.’

  Joe stood and held out his hand. He had read it some time ago. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Now. I have my sermon to dust down. Follow me.’ He swept out of the study, wrenching Joe from the spot to trot behind him as he had done on several bleak Sunday mornings from vestry to altar and back again.

  ‘Wait here.’

  Alone, in the hall, clutching the book.

  He heard a claque of giggles and then a stern sentence from the vicar. The words ‘kind’ and ‘guest’ were heard down the corridor.

  The three children appeared, shepherded by their father only.

  ‘Say goodbye to Joe.’

  They did, and Sarah added, 'I liked being Biggies.’

  Joe wandered back through the late-afternoon town now beset with gale-force winds that would test the evening devotion of many a church- and chapel-goer. He was dazed from the blow of failure. He would read the book. A missionary, that’s what he would have told the vicar. That was impossible now. He was not good enough.