Crossing the Lines

by Melvyn Bragg

  Joe took too big a mouthful of the hated sherry and spluttered.

  Over the next few weeks, Joe discovered that Roderick had been very successful at a ‘grand’ public school and that his father was a Major-General; Henry, who had fought in Malaya, was the son of a judge; George’s father had just retired from the Foreign Office; Edward’s father was something in the City and James was the son of a doctor in a fashionable part of London. He was impressed: with himself. He recounted this information to Rachel in letters of brittle cheerfulness and the tone undisguisedly said, ‘Look what’s happening to me.’

  Emboldened by the tea and sherry party, and slightly tipsy after the second glass of sherry and the pint of beer over dinner, Joe decided to look for a dance hall. James and the others had been invited to parties. As Joe walked out of the college, other undergraduates were coming in, usually carrying a bottle of wine. Saturday night parties were the thing, he knew that. Peppered around the quad were rooms, lit up, windows flung open despite the chill autumn air, voices rising, snatches of laughter.

  Oxford was sharply defined on that Saturday night. Joe was just beginning to be at ease among the daunting buildings, especially now he had found the lanes and narrow streets which threaded them together. He walked towards Carfax where there was a dance hall. Everyone who passed him by seemed full of purpose, spirited, on course, excited to be there, so pleased to be them. Why not him? This drag of homesickness on his energy, this stupid weep-threatening weakness of his must be a punishment, he thought, or was it just another face of his cowardice?

  Carfax Dance Hall was just like the County Ballroom in Carlisle. The same ball of many colours suspended from the ceiling, the same fifteen-piece ‘big band’, the same styles and dances, even the same sized room. Joe felt like an alien. He knew no one. He stood out a modern waltz and a decorous Rock 'n' Roll medley and then asked for a dance. The girl had a faint resemblance to Rachel.

  She was called Olivia. She worked as a secretary in a solicitor’s office. She had just moved to Oxford a year ago. She liked it very much. She could not have been more pleasant and yet the longer they talked and the more they danced - they did two on the trot - the wider grew the gap between them and when he thanked her and led her back to the spot at which he had invited her to dance, both recognised an exhaustion. Joe made one more attempt, this time with a girl deeply absorbed in her steps and barely monosyllabic, and then he went to the bar feeling that he had betrayed Rachel and proved himself a failure.

  He recognised the men but he was too diffident to go up to them. He had seen them together, the three of them, strolling around the quad, sitting with each other at dinner, tall men, bold looking, handsome, Viking stock, heaped hair not unlike his own, but so easy in their skin.

  One of them raised his glass a couple of inches from the table, looked at Joe, tilted the glass a fraction, nodded and by this semaphore said - you’re welcome. Joe joined them.

  ‘Can I get them in?’

  He could. Pints of bitter. It took time at the bar but the time he took at the bar put him in credit. When he returned, he was almost a friend. Harold had come over to help him with the four pints.

  ‘Totty, is what they call it,’ said Harold, ‘that’s what they call Talent. Totty. Good, isn’t it? Seen much?’

  ‘Well,’ Joe sucked at his new pint having too quickly disposed of the old: he liked neither totty nor talent but joining in was essential, ‘being new’s no help.’

  ‘Being new’s a bonus,’ said Frank. ‘Being new gives you a real look in. See that over there?’ Joe followed his gaze. Four young women were gathered around a small round table, conversing with seemingly exclusive intimacy. ‘Begging for it,’ he said, and took a manly draught of beer.

  They talked on and included him. The constriction in Joe’s heart relaxed: the common sound of their words, that burr of childhood, of certainty, calmed him. They spoke with northern accents, every bit as strong as his own but, perhaps because they came from old and powerful northern city grammar schools of proven and hard-nosed excellence, their speech had nothing of diffidence or apology in it. Joe’s accent had started to behave as if it were on black ice. Whenever he braked the attempted pronunciation of a word to fit the governing sound of English, it slithered around helplessly. These Yorkshiremen stood firm.

  Already Joe knew that accent could make a man. Accent and a few code words and a twang worth a life’s mortgage to learn and hand on. But now, in the Carfax dance hall, for half an hour or so, Joe’s voice was back home.

  ‘I think we might have clicked,’ Harold said, raising his glass to the table of girls. To Joe, ‘Coming?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Joe’s reply was so emphatic that they laughed. ‘I have a girlfriend at home,’ he explained, through the darkening alcohol. They laughed louder at that and then easily, confidently, the three Yorkshiremen moved off, moved in.

  Joe was late. He dashed through the crisp, cold streets, the beer sloshing inside him, suddenly happy in anticipation.

  Rachel’s Saturday night, the second since Joe’s departure, had been even more dismal than the first. If you did not go out on Saturday night then when did you go out? On Saturday night you could dress up as on no other night, be later than all other nights, be the person you wanted to be not the person you had to be, go with your boyfriend, your girlfriend, have a laugh, drink a little, Saturday night was the climax of the week and gave it a shape. With Joe, Rachel’s Saturday nights had been rich.

  This time, for the second Saturday, she went with Linda to the Donaldsons’ to play cards. Robert was the oldest of the Donaldson brothers, in his early twenties, as blond-haired as Rachel was dark, brown-skinned from the weather, thick forearms revealed by permanently rolled up sleeves. He invited them all to come with him to the dance at Silloth: they could all fit into his car: Rachel’s brothers would be there, he said, catching her eyes full on, flirting. Rachel said no, quite severely, which made Robert laugh and repeat the offer as he paused at the door and surveyed the meek company around the table, cards held like fans. Rachel looked the other way.

  She got back home by ten as arranged. Joe rang about fifteen minutes later. The phone outside the Junior Common Room had been occupied. And no sooner had he got inside than another man took his waiting place, thus ensuring that Joe could not be greedy with time.

  Rachel’s voice melted the lump of sick fear instantly. He felt so light he could have levitated. Just to hear her, whatever she said.

  ‘The poem was good,’ she said. ‘Did you do it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he smiled at the relief of truth, ‘it just came out of the blue.’

  ‘I’ll keep it,’ she said. ‘Your letters are good.’

  ‘Yours are better. I liked the bit about your dad at the horse sales.’

  ‘I saw your mother again, last Thursday. They’re already getting on with the kitchen.’

  ‘I don’t know why she wants it. We’ve already got one.’

  And nothing much continued to be said for the time Joe felt allotted him by the rather too obviously impatient man outside the box and the reticent girl at the other end of the distancing, clumsy phone, which brought you together and emphasised your loneliness at the same time.

  ‘Had a couple of drinks with some men from Yorkshire.’ He did not mention the dance. ‘And you?’

  ‘Cards at the Donaldsons’.’ She did not mention Robert. ‘Linda’s getting warmer.’

  ‘Less than two weeks,’ he said, hoping that by declaring it he would dull the time, ‘past half way.’

  ‘Are you sure I’ll fit in down there?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It sounds’ - Rachel had thought about Oxford a great deal and with apprehension before and more intensely and worryingly since Joe’s letters; but she did not want to hurt Joe’s feelings - ‘a bit posh for me.’

  It had proved a bit posh for Joe.

  ‘It isn’t,’ he said. ‘Everybody’s really friendly.’

  ‘And you’re O.
K. in yourself?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, speaking accurately and warmly out of the moment, ‘I’m having a great time. You?’

  ‘To tell you the truth I can’t pretend I’m not missing you,’ she said, in a rehearsed and level tone. Rachel’s flat declaration blew Joe’s fears clean away. Less than two weeks!

  The man tapped, politely, on the glass. Joe’s reaction was that of someone caught at the scene of a crime.

  ‘Somebody else needs the phone.’

  ‘All right then.’

  ‘I’ll have to go.’

  ‘Same time on Wednesday?’

  He apologised to the man outside, who apologised for tapping on the glass.

  Joe went back the narrow way, down the steps, past the Steward’s bar out of which came the unmistakable sounds of ruggah buggahs on the beer. He went in. More than half the team was there and none of them accused him of cowardice. He bought a pint and sat on one of the benches against the wall. He was between the full back, one of the snootier and a big prop, one of the more amiable members of the team. Joe had not mastered all the names but fourteen faces had been familiar to him since the first full training session and he thought as he sank the pint that this was a company, one to which he belonged.

  ‘Say something in your funny accent, Richardson!’ Full backs sentence was delivered as an order. ‘Something like “oop’t’North like” or “Doon’t’ pit like”.’

  ‘Or Bugger Off, like,’ said the big prop.

  ‘Oh come on! Why don’t we take Richardson’s trousers off?’

  For a tremulous moment Joe thought that this suggestion would be carried through.

  ‘Oh grow up,’ said a wing three-quarter, and to Joe, ‘ignore him, the sad deviant in our midst.’

  ‘I bit hard,’ said Joe, ‘when he’s belting it out in my ear.’

  Joe got up and followed the wing three-quarter to a small table. They talked about the game. ‘Absolute bloody nightmare!’ the rugby man said. ‘Half the Blues there, I expect, but still. Absolute. Bloody. Nightmare. Another?’

  He brought back two pints at which Joe looked with some concern. The early sherry had not gone down well. The number of pints was already way in excess of his usual intake. He lit a cigarette; remembered his manners; offered one; accepted.

  ‘You’re a bit light for open side flanker,’ wing three-quarter said, raising his glass. ‘Didn’t you say you played blind side loose forward at school?’

  ‘Yes.’ Joe thought he swallowed the word but somehow it doubled back and came out whole. He raised his glass and took too big a draught to get it over with. ‘I was blind side loose forward for two years.’

  ‘I’ll mention it to Dougie. Oh God! Absolute. Nightmare! They hammered us. They crucified us!’

  As Joe walked, slowly and almost steadily, across the quad to his staircase, he still felt some of the stiffness and ache of the game, felt an uneasy turbulence in his stomach, felt as happy as he had so far been at Oxford, twelve days to go to Rachel. James above all was really a friend. Some of the ruggah buggahs were O.K. The full back didn’t count.

  He passed the chapel where he would go in the morning. It might be a good idea to join the choir, he thought, he liked singing in a choir, you could forget yourself in a choir, he would see if he could fit it in.

  The stairs on the staircase seemed steep and he was glad that James was not yet in. He undressed unsteadily, got into bed, closed his eyes and then his mind became a sway boat, swooping up into his skull, up and up as if the skull were as wide as the sky and then rushing down again, whoosh, down, down the sway boat, then up, up, up and down again whoosh, whoosh. He got out of bed, clammy throated, his stomach beginning to move with a life of its own and just made the lavatory on the floor upstairs next to the lecturer with the dog. He tried to be sick quietly so as not to disturb the dog. It was the first time he had been drunk sick and after a while he thought he had heaved out all his insides. His throat was sore. His mouth stank. His stomach simmered and threatened still and when he got back to his bedroom and drank a glass of water, there was one last watery upheaval.

  Joe spent some time wiping it off the floor. It would be terrible if the Scout saw it. The Scout looked a bit like Jack Ack who played the accordion. He used two handkerchiefs which he then rinsed in his sink. He felt cold and very shaky.

  In the morning he could scarcely move for the aches and the trembling. He would still go to chapel. Outside he took several deep breaths. The cold air hurt. He was lucky, he thought, that it was not the eucharist - not bread and wine. His clerical grey suit felt too tight.

  ‘Dear Rachel,

  ‘Thanks for what you said about the poem. I enclose another, not very good but maybe you’ll like it. Everything is much as before. I can’t wait for you to meet people here - I’ve told two or three of them about you. Good old Linda!

  ‘You’re always with people here, that means with other men. I suppose it’s like being in the army or public school, but sometimes I’d just like to have a meal on my own, say, or walk somewhere without feeling that everybody around you was walking with much the same goals in mind. I want to say hello to people as we all do in Wigton, but whenever I try it they look through you or look as if I’ve done something to offend them. The gowns we wear make it even more conformist and when we take off the gowns there’s still a uniform, of sorts, some variations, you can tell the more expensive stuff but a Martian wouldn’t be able to. Some of them can be quite snooty about clothes. Remember that sports jacket Mam got specially made at Redmayne’s? This man - I don’t know his name - we were standing at the college entrance, rubbed his finger and thumb over the lapel and said, “Good bit of cloth, pity you didn’t get it run up into a jacket.” You can only laugh.’ Though Joe had not laughed, felt put down.

  ‘Breakfast is worst. It seems more intensive. Most of them read the papers - The Times is the favourite - and usually they talk about world affairs. It’s been Eoka for days on end now, and Makarios and terrorism and the British Army. One of them had been an officer in the British Army in Cyprus and he reckons terrorism can never be beaten which seems very pessimistic to me and giving in. I mentioned the Algerians in the street I worked in in the Bois de Vincennes, but it didn’t seem to add to the discussion. This ex-army officer just used it to bolster his own case and said Algeria would have to be given its freedom soon. Look at Israel, he said. They know a lot; you have to give them that.

  ‘Another time it was Germany’s reunion based on what the Queen said. I disagreed with that but somebody who had a brother in the Foreign Office said it was the only way to make Europe a peaceful continent and we should join Europe as soon as possible. I disagreed with that as well but I didn’t have a chance to get a word in. Sometimes it’s best just to listen: you can learn a lot. Some of them talk like old men. Now that I’ve written this I realise that I probably enjoy breakfast more than I thought I did! But I do feel hemmed in, that’s for certain. Only a week now! …’

  Rachel felt even more anxious. There was a fearfulness creeping into her and she had not bargained for that.

  The day before Matriculation and the photograph, Joe went to get his hair cut. There had been no more than a handful of remarks, not all disparaging, but he had made his decision. ‘Just a trim, is it, sir?’

  The young man, one of three, patted Joe’s hair as if it were a favourite little dog. There was a prancing fun about him which made Joe feel good.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I want it short. And flat. And no Brylcreem either.’

  ‘Oh dear! Is sir absolutely sure? This suits you very well.’ He flicked at it with a comb and looked admiringly in the mirror. Joe wavered, but only for a moment: he saw the rows and rows of other men, some long-haired but in a style different from his own, or a style that depended on wavy hair or a long face or a degree of self-confidence out of Joe’s reach. Most wore short back and sides though now and then permitted themselves the extra inch. ‘Short,’ said Joe. ‘Sorry.’

&
nbsp; ‘Oh well. The customer is always right.’ He winked. ‘Cross your heart sure?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Joe and he wriggled a little under such pleasurable pressure of attention.

  When it was done he looked at it very carefully. It looked just like almost everybody else’s: flat, short, neat. He thanked him and wanted to say, ‘Let’s have a drink.’ Joe’s relief at not having to strain to fit in, the instantaneous closeness he felt for this - man? boy? - he would be about Joe’s own age - persuaded him that he could have found someone who could become a friend. He lingered for a moment or two. The decision had to be made quickly. Outside on the streets short-haired undergraduates went to and fro. The boy smiled at him, openly, easily.

  ‘Anything else, sir?’

  What’s your name? Why could he not ask? His indecision began to embarrass him. What’s your name?

  The boy smiled sympathetically. Yes, Joe thought, they could be friends.

  ‘What time do you close tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘Six o’clock,’ he replied, and waited.

  Joe blushed. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and rushed out.

  ‘Pity about the hair,’ said James. ‘I rather liked it as it was. It had character.’

  Later Joe and James took tea together. Joe had been working at the desk, James slouched in an armchair with a book. James was just as open and easy as anybody could be, Joe thought, already a friend.

  ‘You ought to read this,’ James said, putting the book aside reluctantly. ‘I just bought it in Blackwell’s. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe. Wonderful reviews. Totally new world to me. I think you’d enjoy it.’

  Joe nodded, looked carefully at James and then produced the lightweight pipe he had bought on the way back from the barber’s shop.

  ‘Tricky to keep those things going,’ James said. ‘I never mastered it.’ He smiled.

  Joe packed in the tobacco too tightly.