by Sue Gee
Trio
Northumberland: the winter of 1937. In a remote moorland cottage, Steven Coulter, a young history teacher, is filled with sadness and longing at the death of his wife. Through a charismatic colleague, Frank Embleton, and Frank’s sister, Diana, he is drawn into the beguiling world of a group of musicians, and falls gradually under their spell. But as war approaches a decision is made which calls all their lives quite shockingly into question.
Moving between the beauty and isolation of the moors, a hill-town school and a graceful old country house, Trio delicately explores conscience and idealism, romantic love and most painful desire. Throughout it all, the power of music to disturb, uplift and affirm is unforgettably evoked.
PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK
‘This is a beautifully written and moving account of loss and grief that spans two generations. Perhaps unusually, it’s a perceptive study of how a widower copes with bereavement rather than the more usual topic of the widow’s response to the death of the spouse. The landscape and natural world of southern Northumberland are evoked vividly and precisely. Its society in the 1930s is brought to life across the span from the wealthy to the poor with great conviction. The way in which the harshness of two wars and the diseases of poverty are faced by the author is just one of the elements that makes this novel so affecting.’ —Charles Palliser
‘Trio is a gentle, elegiac meditation on grief, carved into the bleak, rugged moorland of Northumberland, anchored firmly in a rich, ever-changing landscape. Sue Gee writes with perception about the healing power of music, setting the history of an ancient land into the context of a modern world, making sense of the inevitable sad passage of time. The enduring strength of love and family forms a fragile but supple backbone to the novel, maintaining its power in the face of looming cataclysmic world events. A book to be read carefully and savoured.’ —Clare Morrall
PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS WORK
‘Sue Gee writes subtly and deftly, observing with a wry and sympathetic eye … This is a hugely enjoyable and rewarding read.’ —The Independent
‘About The Mysteries of Glass:
one of the most moving and beautifully written stories that I can remember.’ —Readers Books of the Year, Guardian
‘About Reading in Bed:
as seductively readable as its title suggests ... draws the reader in with its skilful portrayal of real-life situations’ —The Times
‘A beautifully observed tale, written with boundless compassion and humour.’ —Woman and Home magazine
‘Profound and lyrical, it’s full of light and darkness and the most marvellous description.’ —Shena Mackay, Observer
Trio
Sue Gee is the author of ten novels, including The Hours of the Night, winner of the Romantic Novel of the Year award, and The Mysteries of Glass, long listed for the Orange Prize. Her most recent novels are Reading in Bed, a Daily Mail Book Club selection, and Coming Home. She has also published a collection of short stories, Last Fling.
Sue Gee ran the MA in Creative Writing at Middlesex University from 2000–2008 and now teaches at the Faber Academy. She is a mentor with the Write to Life group at Freedom from Torture. She lives in London and Herefordshire.
ALSO BY SUE GEE
Novels
Spring Will Be Ours (1988)
Keeping Secrets (1991)
The Last Guests of the Season (1993)
Letters from Prague (1994)
The Hours of the Night (1996)
Earth & Heaven (2000)
The Mysteries of Glass (2004)
Reading in Bed (2007)
Coming Home (2014)
Short Stories
Last Fling (2011)
For Timothy
Book I
Part One
1
1936
Winter was closing in: propped up against the pillows, she could see through the one small window that the moor was speckled with snow. There was nothing else to see: no other house, no livestock; only the frozen ground, the pitiless pale sky from which more snow would fall today. That was a certainty.
He had lit the fire, before he left for work. Two weeks before the end of term, and he had to leave her, with coal in the scuttle, a box of wood – off-cuts and logs from the freezing shed – and a bowl of porridge on the chair at the bedside.
‘Just a little,’ he said, standing there in his old jersey, unravelling at the wrist. Something else she had not done, nor mended. ‘For me, Margaret – do it for me.’ His tie was askew, the collar of his shirt was frayed. Another thing. ‘Please,’ he said, and lightly – oh, so lightly – kissed her cheek. Then he clattered down the narrow stairs, took his jacket, hat and coat from the peg, called out goodbye again. The door slammed: keep in the warmth, keep it in! And he walked away down the track.
Small flames still leapt. She turned slowly from the window, saw firelight reflected in the dark varnished wood of washstand and skirting board and door. I’ll scrape that all off one day, he’d said, when they moved in two years ago, but he hadn’t. Too many other things to do: mend the roof, replace the rotting window frames, and the ill-fitting door that led straight from kitchen to moor. He had to fence in the little garden where they were growing vegetables, and make a gate. He had to replace the missing quarry tiles on the kitchen floor. He did everything well, like his father.
Geoffrey Coulter, Cabinet Maker, Birley Bank, Near Hexham
Steven had learned carpentry from him as a boy, could have followed in his footsteps; instead, went to university, the first person in his family ever to do such a thing. But the skill was still there: he sawed and planed and hammered, out in the old farmer’s woodshed which became a workshop. She took out a chair and sat sewing curtains in the shade of the thorn tree, looking up now and then to watch him through the open door. Birds flew by. It was summer then. To teach, as she used to do, with a long journey to and fro each day: over the windswept moor, with its single, sheep-worn track, down to the road where the bus to Kirkhoughton came only every hour. Who, except a lonely old farmer, dead a twelvemonth, as they’d said in town, would want to live here?
She tried to move a pillow behind her, up against the bars of the iron bedstead. Like washstand and dresser, it had been bought at auction. They’d walked, hand in gloved hand, amongst chests and tallboys and dismantled beds stacked up against a wall. This will be our marriage bed, they told one another. This one. The brass needed polishing. I’ll polish it, she said, her hand in his.
Farmers were looking at scythes and pitchforks, straw still on their boots; stout women in coats and felt hats went through china in boxes. The auctioneer mounted his steps as she found a mildewed mirror. They looked at their reflection; he reached out, touched her face within the glass, ran his fingers over her lips. She stood very still, and watched him do this.
The cold iron bars pressed through the pillow: nothing was comfortable to her now. Not leaning back, nor lying down on the mattress, on which, in the first year of their marriage, they had taken one another over and over again, the window open in spring and summer to their cries, to the calls of peewit and lamb, the scents of grass and heather.
The window was tight shut now. They had told her that fresh air was crucial, that if she insisted on staying at home it should be open day and night, but no, it was too cold, it was intolerable.
She shifted, just a little, reached for the bowl of porridge. Every movement had to be made so slowly. Every breath felt dangerous. He soaked her stained nightgown and sheets in a bucket; hung them over the range. She sat on the chair and watched him remake the bed, again and again. He helped her to wash, to brush her teeth; he took down the washstand jug and basin
, and the chamber pot.
Don’t draw the curtains, she murmured sometimes at night, when he had done all these things, climbed the stairs and undressed, and gone to the window. He got carefully in beside her, turned out the paraffin lamp, lay still. He took her hand; they turned to look out at the stars. It felt as if it were the last thing left they could do together.
Not every day was difficult. She had rested and rested: this, as she had been told, over and over, was what she must do. If she were in the sanatorium, they told her, if she were sensibly down in the sanatorium near Barrasford, that was what she would do. If she – and if he – insisted that she stay at home, then rest was essential: no exertion, nothing, not even washing a teacup. Eating was what was needed, to keep her strength up. So he cooked, and she did nothing all spring and summer: he could manage, he told her in term time, and in the holidays what else would he want to do but bring her back to health?
On good days he took one of the chairs his father had made as a wedding present, when no one was thinking of illness – why should they be thinking of that? – and put it by the kitchen door he had made himself, that first year, and she sat there and watched him, digging in fitful spring sun. Clouds blew over the moor and curlew called. Sturdy sheep trotted up the track with their lambs from the farm below: white-faced Cheviots, bred for this particular stretch of the moor, as all Northumbrian sheep were bred for their own patch. The farmer lifted his cap, stopped, called his dog to, while they talked about sheep, and the weather, and she looking stronger now. And broad beans and potatoes were in flower, those onions doing well, look at that, that was a good sign.
It grew warmer. She brought out her sewing bag again, and stitched in the summer sun, making a quilt from scraps left over from bedspread and curtains, a small one because there weren’t that many scraps, and one day – oh, one day! – they might have a baby at last.
He dug up potatoes, brought them into the kitchen in a box, and she heard him pour rain water over them in the sink. She heard him scrape another chair over the tiles and turned to smile at him as he set it down beside her on the turf, and cleared her throat, and then a scarlet spray as fine as pinpricks speckled the quilt, and then there was suddenly more.
And then everyone said it was madness, to go on living up here. She should be in the sanatorium, flooded with light and air from the wide open windows and doctors on call and nurses to nurse you, you silly lass, so he wouldn’t have to, it was too much for him, surely it was.
They all said it, in letters which Steven picked up after school from the box on a tree at the bottom of the track: her mother, writing from Cawbeck; his mother, from Birley Bank. Then came one from Miss Brierley: they wanted her back to health, the girls had never forgotten her, they sent their best wishes, they all did. Would it not be better to take advantage of the sanatorium, my dear . . .
The district nurse, Miss Douglas, wheeling her bicycle up the track, taking her temperature, shaking her head: she said it, too. ‘Look at you, Margaret Coulter.’ She brought the spotted mirror to the bed, showed her the thin white face, eyes huge in dark sockets, the colour on her cheekbones bright as blood. ‘Hectic, we call that colour,’ she said, taking the mirror away as she closed her eyes. ‘Not a natural colour, my lass, and when will you two see sense? You know you could infect him, don’t you, you do realise that.’
She lay still as a mouse, and listened.
Autumn was coming, wind and rain blew hard. And perhaps she should do what they said, she told him that evening, as he sat beside her and held her hand. But he wouldn’t be able to see her, he said, they won’t allow visitors at Barrasford; and they looked at one another, unable to imagine nor bear it.
Especially, she thought, she could not bear it, because she had never known a time when she had not loved him, not since the day she had looked across the Museum gallery as her girls made notes from glass cases, and saw him shepherding in his boys. ‘Quiet, now, lads, that’s it.’ And something about the way he spoke, the way he reached out his arm to bring in one of them, small and hesitant—‘Come along, Moffat,’ – such a simple, ordinary thing, but all at once it wasn’t ordinary, it was his way of doing it. And everything fell into place.
‘You belong with me,’ he said on that wild autumn evening, as she lay back against the pillows. ‘Let’s see how you go on. If you’re not better by Christmas . . .’
He went downstairs again, and came up with two bowls of very hot soup on a tray and made her drink hers to the last drop and she did feel better then, and slept well, for once, knowing she wasn’t going to leave.
The fire was beginning to die, but the light at the window grew brighter. She turned her head once more, slowly, slowly, and saw the snow beginning to fall again, flakes blowing here and there entrancingly, the room filled with whiteness, until it was falling thickly, on and on, so she could no longer see the empty miles of moorland, only the whirling white. For a long time she lay there, watching, imagining its fall on the thorn tree and shed and water butt, coating them thickly; on the river far below, dark and racing. The bowl of cold porridge rested on the quilt. She had eaten three mouthfuls, for him.
Then she slowly put the bowl back on the chair. She must use the chamber pot, she must see to the fire. Slowly, slowly, she pushed back the blankets and quilt; unsteadily set her feet, in the socks her mother had knitted, down on the rug. If he were here, she’d be reaching for his arm.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, sat there for ages, hearing the last log fall to pieces in the grate; breathing lightly, from her upper chest, as she did all the time now, though what good fresh air could get into you like that, Nurse Douglas had asked her. ‘And if it’s dangerous to breathe more deeply you should be in the sanatorium, my girl, I’m not going to say it again.’
She got to her feet, bent down, reached for the pot and squatted over it. Oh, that was better. Slowly she pulled herself up again, and perhaps the porridge had done her good, she did feel a bit stronger now, enough to carry the pot to the door and put it down on the tiny space at the top of the stairs. She could hear the clock ticking in the kitchen, and the shift of wood in the range. Such a long time since she had been down there.
Now then. The fire. She shut the bedroom door again, saw the room filled with miraculous snowy light, so beautiful, and walked over the bare boards to the fire box and bent down to feed the flames with fresh wood, just a little at first, that was it, and she blew, as much as she dared, just a little, to fan it all, and a fresh flame leapt up towards her. She blew again, and sparks glowed and little bits of ash flew up, and she coughed.
Up the blood came.
She pulled herself to her feet and coughed again, impossible not to. She reached for the washstand as something to clutch at and steady her, something to hold on to, but the blood came up, chokingly, more and now more. She leaned over the bowl and saw its whiteness and blue-painted flowers disappear in a clotted crimson flood.
Help me – the words swam through her. She was gasping, her hands to her terrible mouth, then clutching at bed, bedclothes, anything, as the marvellous light went black and she crumpled to the dusty floor.
Which was where, hours later, after stumbling up the track, clearing the bank of snow at the door with the spade he had left there, pushing it open, calling her name, pulling his coat off and racing up the narrow stairs, he found her.
Part Two
1
Snow was falling again as he crossed the playground.
‘Sir!’ Footsteps came running after him. ‘Mr Coulter, sir!’
He turned, saw Johnny Mather racing up.
‘You forgot this, sir.’
He shook his head, took the textbook. ‘Silly of me. Thanks, Mather.’
He remembered cleaning the blackboard, as the boys went noisily out, and stacking up the exercise books at the desk; remembered putting them in his bag and leaving the classroom. He didn’t remember w
ho he’d said goodbye to in the smoke-filled staffroom, nor putting his coat on, nor walking across the playground, though here he was, almost at the gates.
‘Wouldn’t have been able to do your marking, would you, sir?’
Mather was class monitor: it was one of his jobs to collect things left behind and hand them in to Miss Aickman’s office. Or to go running after a teacher with his mind elsewhere.
‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘Off you go.’
And Mather touched his cap, and ran back to fetch his own stuff, half-skidding on an icy patch, shouting out.
Frozen slush was still heaped up by the railings; the sky was a yellowish-grey. He put the book in his bag, and went out into the street.
Snow was falling on snow: piled up in the gutters, all round the square, coating the war memorial and the great tall Christmas tree in the middle. Paths had been scraped along the pavement. There were boys everywhere, ragging about until they saw him, then walking away down the hill to Bridge Street or along the side streets, Middle Lane, Milk Lane, as the Kirkhoughton town clock struck the three-quarter hour. Tea time. Lights from the shops shone out. The afternoon ebbed away.
‘Never known a winter like it,’ said an old lady, half to herself and half to him, walking slowly along with her basket. It was what people said every year. He nodded, walked on to the bus stop.
‘Come on, come on.’ Snow fell down his collar, he stamped his feet. Then the bus came into view, lit up, the wipers going steadily. He climbed on, a few boys behind him, threw his bag on the seat. As they pulled away, a snowball suddenly hit his window, and he jumped, hearing Thompson splutter behind him. He looked out, saw Donald Hindmarsh, his hand clapped to his mouth. Not such a dreadful thing, but everyone was tiptoeing round him these days, pretending that they weren’t.
