by Sue Gee
‘Mather, fetch Miss Aickman. Run!’
The classroom door banged, they could hear him shouting in the corridor. Michael McNulty, who always sat next to Moffat, had thrown off his jacket, was tugging off his tie. In a moment he was stripped to a singlet, his shirt pressed up against the sodden handkerchief, blood everywhere.
‘Mr Coulter?’
Miss Aickman was at the door. He looked across at her, saw her take it in.
‘I’ll ring Dr Maguire.’ And she was gone, another classroom door and then another opening along the corridor as she ran.
The bloody shirt was lowered to the desk. Moffat dropped the handkerchief on top of it. His face was a battlefield. He whispered, ‘It’s stopped now, sir.’
There was a silence. Steven was shaking so hard he could not speak. Then Donald Hindmarsh, who was always made to sit at the front to stop him larking about, said, ‘Moffat, I’ve told you before not to be greedy with the jam,’ and the class erupted.
Nobody ever forgot that afternoon.
The bus drove away and he walked to the foot of the track. It was almost dark. Moffat’s ashen young face – he could not get it out of his mind, nor that soaking scarlet handkerchief. He flashed his torch over the letter box, felt inside. Empty. He began the climb.
For weeks, getting up and down had been almost as difficult as in the great snow of last year. He had taken a stick, but still slipped and slid and waded through the mud. But the sun and wind had dried it now, and walking was easier. The torchlight flashed on caked ruts and winter grass, cropped low by the sheep all summer. Now they’d been taken for lambing down to the farm, whose buildings he could just make out in the distance, far to the left. And now there was only the sound of the wind, and the first pale stars appearing, growing brighter as he climbed.
There was the cottage.
And there was Moffat, gasping and choking at the back of the class.
Miss Aickman had taken him, slowly, slowly, her arm around him, out to the washrooms, and then to sit waiting in her office until – he and the boys could see from the sunny window – Dr Maguire pulled up at the gates and walked briskly across the playground. Straughan was waiting at the door. Mrs Moffat came running in her old winter coat and headscarf. Then came the ambulance.
‘All right, boys, settle down.’
‘Where will he go, sir?’
‘I expect—’ Steven cleared his throat. ‘I expect he’ll go to the hospital in Hexham.’
‘Or Barrasford,’ said McNulty. ‘That’s where his dad was, in the sanatorium. That’s where he passed away.’ He stopped abruptly.
There was a silence. Pages turned. After a few minutes the bell rang out, and it was time for maths.
Stars lit the leafless hawthorn tree, the woodshed. Steven let the torch beam light the blue door of the cottage, put down his bag and turned the handle. And not since that terrible evening in January, after the setting of the stone, had a return here been so difficult, nor the place felt so entirely desolate.
‘It’s stopped now, sir.’
Brave boy. Would he live, if they took him into the sanatorium? Might Margaret have lived, had she gone there? Might he have had her beside him still?
He kicked the door to, lit the lamps.
4
The Christmas tree went up in the Square. It was huge and full, cut from Harwood Forest, and brought down by bull-nosed lorry in the first week of December.
‘Look at that!’
‘That’s grand!’
Paper chains went up in the shops, everyone’s mood was lifted. At school, though people thought about Moffat – how could they not? – they rarely spoke of him. He had been taken to Barrasford: Straughan telephoned once, the following Monday. He told them in Assembly next morning that he was doing as well as he could. Nobody knew what that meant, or if they did, did not say so. The great waters of school life washed over everything, and the term hurtled on. Amidst the writing of reports, there was talk of a concert.
Of course, they could never be professional: George knew that, though he never spelled it out. He knew, too, that in any trio or quartet there might be a weaker player, and that with them it was Diana. She was good, she was passionate and intent, but it was for her, in rehearsals, that they most often had to stop, and repeat a passage, often at her own request. But still: no matter. They made a very fine amateur group.
George knew these things because he was the one who’d come closest to success: the only one who’d gone to the Royal College.
‘But we must all go! Of course we must.’
A June afternoon in 1926, the windows open wide to birdsong, Barrow mowing away in his shirt sleeves, petrol fumes rising into the balmy air. George had bicycled over from Coquet Bridge; he waved the letter at them.
‘There’s still time to apply.’
Margot was on one window seat, Diana on the other. They looked like something out of Leighton, he thought, striding up and down before them. It wasn’t their clothes: Margot’s straight linen skirt and Diana’s low-waisted dress were indisputably Today. But Diana was somehow not of this age, never had been, and it was their air, the composition, which made him think of Leighton reproductions seen in art classes at school: two languid young women – who would guess at their musical energy? – dreaming at an open window, waiting for something to happen.
Something should! He waved the letter again.
‘London awaits!’
Footsteps came over the flagstones: a man and his dog. Margot waved, then sat clasping her knees.
‘I can’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I couldn’t leave him.’
‘But surely – he’d want you to go. Let me ask him!’
She shook her head. ‘Even if he did – I just couldn’t bear to think of it—’
‘But you were away at school – he sent you!’
She thought of their partings, Diana beside them in the hall; of the way her father had kissed them both, and turned quickly away. She thought of her return, of his coming across from the stable yard, or out of the library, his face lit up.
‘You’re back!’
She ran into his arms.
‘The house is alive again.’ He kissed and released her. ‘And where’s Diana?’
‘She’s coming to stay next week, if that’s all right.’
‘Of course it is. Now – come and tell me everything.’
She turned away from the window as the front door banged.
‘I just couldn’t,’ she said again. ‘I’ll go on having lessons here. We can all play together in the holidays.’
George gave an exaggerated sigh, but he meant it. ‘You’re hopeless. But Diana – you must have a try.’
She shook her head, lifted her mass of hair.
‘I couldn’t go without Margot.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’
Footsteps came along the hall to the door of the drawing room. He sprang to open it.
‘Good afternoon, sir! I’ve had some good news.’
Heslop raised an elegant eyebrow. From the window seat Margot made complicated gestures: Don’t ask him about me, I’m not going.
They took tea in the shade of the cedar, the dog flopped down on the grass, pigeons cooing above them, and the idea that the girls might audition wasn’t even mentioned.
And so it was that George took the train down to London alone, seen off by his parents, by Margot, Diana and Frank, soon to go to Oxford, all waving and waving amidst the clouds of steam. And in London he was tutored and encouraged, and invited to join a quartet. He could have been a soloist, even: George Liddell, on London concert platforms. In Vienna! But as the end of the final year approached he found himself refusing all the offers made to him, as Margot and Diana had refused to leave Northumberland. He had his own reasons for wanting
to return.
A free double period. Steven sat in a corner of the staffroom, writing his third years’ reports.
A good term’s work. That was Mather.
Satisfactory. That was Carr. And Dagg. And quite a lot of them: too many, Frank would probably say. We want more than Satisfactory.
His eye went from mark-book to report form, all down the register.
We expect more of him next term. That was Hindmarsh. Would he pass the School Certificate in two years’ time? He needs to work considerably harder. Hindmarsh looked set to leave at the end of the Upper Fifth: and then what? An apprenticeship? The Army?
He blew on the ink, set the form on top of the others as the bell rang out and the door opened.
In came Armstrong, with a heap of maths books. He nodded, thumped them down on the table, lit up.
An excellent term’s work. McNulty. McNulty looked set for university, he and Frank had agreed at the last departmental meeting. There’d be another in half an hour, the last in the Christmas term, and always a bit awkward, Dunn twitching away, saying little.
Here came Moffat. We very much hope to welcome him back next term. He stopped, let the ink dry, thought of that sheet-white boy lying by an open sanatorium window as the fresh cold air blew in, listening to the waters of the North Tyne racing past the village. He’d send him a Christmas card.
Smoke drifted across the room as Armstrong opened a textbook, inhaling deeply. Steven coughed.
‘Sorry.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ He coughed again, he sat suddenly rigid.
You realise she could infect you, Mr Coulter? Dumpy Nurse Douglas, standing at the door with her bicycle. The pair of you want your heads examined, I’m not going to say it again. She bumped away down the track.
Now the anniversary of that terrible death approached, and how was he going to get through? For a moment he shut his eyes.
‘Everyone’s coming down with something,’ said Armstrong, flattening a page. He stubbed out his cigarette in a filthy ashtray. Sometimes it felt like a pub in here.
Steven cleared his throat, and got out his handkerchief. His mother washed and ironed them every other week, with his vests and shirts, giving them back after Sunday lunch. He spat very carefully into it, had a careful look. Nothing. Not a hint, though he found he was trembling. Slowly he reached for the next report form. Benjamin Potts. A creditable term’s work. Armstrong lit up again.
Every year, there was a carol service, as traditionally a part of school life as the Nativity Play had been in Kirkhoughton Infants, down in Shaw Street.
‘I remember you, McNulty, with a tea towel round your head.’
‘Shurrup.’
Every now and then in a break they could hear little Alfie Stote from the second years, rehearsing in the hall for his big moment, Miss Aickman tinkling away.
‘Once in Roy-al D-a-a-v-i-d’s City,’ warbled Hindmarsh, passing him in the corridor on the way home on Friday, and Stote kicked him.
‘Boys!’
Then, in Assembly, Straughan announced something new. Not only the carol service to mark the Christmas term, but a concert, to be given by friends of Mr Embleton. The Hepplewick Trio – perhaps one or two of the boys had heard of them. Most of the faces before him were blank, but Steven saw Tom Herron give a nod. Herron was not unlike Frank, perhaps, he thought suddenly: had a background where certain things were taken for granted, though his parents had not sent him off to public school. Perhaps they were principled. Perhaps they just couldn’t afford it.
‘I understand they’re fine musicians, and that we are in for a treat. Afternoon lessons on the 15th of December will be cancelled. Homework—’ he gave his dry smile, as a murmur ran round the hall, ‘—homework will not be given. And now we will stand and sing our closing hymn: “Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding”.’ Miss Aickman struck up, everyone got to their feet with the usual clatter, off they all went, and within moments the music was sweeping staff and boys along.
‘You didn’t tell me,’ Steven said to Frank in the staffroom, as they gathered their books. ‘About the concert.’ Boys went thundering past the closed door. ‘Quiet!’ roared Jack Halpin, out there on corridor duty. ‘Keep to the left!’
‘We’ve only just arranged it with Straughan. You know what he’s like about new things.’ Frank made a Straughan face, a mixture of caution and implacability, and Steven laughed. ‘Glad to see you looking better.’ He made for the door. ‘And it should be good.’
Now, on the afternoon of the carol service, they all went trooping out of the school gates after dinner – ‘Lunch, Dagg, lunch,’ – and, as every year, the pupils from Kirkhoughton Girls came to join them, walking in neat pairs along Milk Lane and out into Main Street, before they reached the Square.
‘Eyes front,’ said Gowens, bringing up the rear.
It was freezing. The two long crocodiles made their way at a brisk pace, past the towering Christmas tree, past the lit-up shops, the butcher hung with game, past the Museum and the war memorial and down Battle Street to St Peter’s, where an ancient coke furnace did its best. As Gowens said every year, it was still as cold as charity.
A crib stood inside the west door, and the girls went ooh and ah as they walked past and the boys pretended to take no notice. Wispy old Shaw was waiting before the rood screen in his purple Advent stole and the organ softly played. Candles burned, up on the altar, and here and there on the deep window ledges. The place smelled of wax, coke fumes, boys.
Everyone was there: every member of staff, with Straughan and Miss Brierley greeting one another at the door, each to read a lesson. Steven saw Frank usher his sixth form into the pews at the back, giving them all a smile. It was the kind of smile which would make the most recalcitrant boy want to do his best, and Steven, moving slowly forward with the lower forms, thought that only Frank could have persuaded Straughan to do something different for once, and that if he put his mind to it he could probably persuade anyone to do anything. And he knew that he himself, as the bleakest day of his year approached, was somehow looking forward to the concert.
He settled down with his third years, next to the aisle, Dunn at the other end of the pew. Everything was just as it always was, with its atmosphere of sentiment, boredom and expectation. He looked across at the girls. Before they were married, Margaret had been with them, down at the front with her first years, and the Christmas after they met, when they’d become engaged, he had craned his neck to see the back of her head, a little felt hat on her piled-up hair. Nut-brown, he had said, the first time she unpinned it for him, sitting on the grassy moor outside the empty cottage they had come upon, on an autumn afternoon. The wind blew strands back from her face; he smoothed it and stroked it, leaned forward and kissed her—
Oh, darling, darling.
This time last year he had been at her funeral.
‘Margaret?’
Banging the front door shut against the snow, running up the narrow staircase, numb with cold.
‘Margaret?’
Knowing, in the silence, that something was wrong; pushing into the unlit bedroom, the snow at the window falling on and on—
The organ played a last few bars. People were checking the number on the boards, opening their hymn books: no need for old Shaw to announce a thing, after his welcome: everyone knew how this service began. And unmusical though Steven felt himself to be, here was music he had known all his life and still loved. He drew a great breath, pushing that dark afternoon away. He made himself push it away. He opened his own book and found the page, as Alfie Stote made his way from the front pew up to the chancel steps and stood before them.
Stote was a scrap of a boy, really, like Moffat. Sometimes the only decent meal some of these lads had was at school. Some of the parents, Steven knew, could barely afford the second-hand blazers the boys arrived in – that had certainly been true of Mo
ffat, one of five, his father gone and his mother cleaning six houses a week. That was what Miss Aickman had said, as the ambulance drove away.
Behind the rood screen, Mr Shaw got to his feet. They all rose with him. There was a hush. Then little Stote, his mousy hair watered down within an inch of its life, looked straight ahead down the aisle and began, unaccompanied, to sing.
‘Once in Royal David’s city,
Stood a lowly cattle shed . . .’
His voice was as clear as a moorland stream, as pure as winter air.
‘Where a mother laid her baby
In a manger for his bed . . .’
Steven felt the hairs rise all along the back of his neck as the top notes in the next two lines rang out, and knew that this was probably happening to everyone around him.
‘Mary was that mother mild,
Jesus Christ her little child.’
Stote finished, and stood very still. Then the organ sounded and he made his way back to his seat as they all began to sing.
‘He came down to earth from heaven,
Who is God and Lord of all . . .’
Two hundred voices, maybe more, rose in unison. Beside Steven, Mather and McNulty were singing at the tops of their voices; along the row he could hear them all, his lads, his class, doing their best: Dagg and Cowen, Potts and Herdman and Wanless, and he felt that to be singing with his boys now was one of the best things to have happened for a long while: he loved them, he was proud of them.
He hadn’t quite known that he felt like this.
‘With the poor and meek and lowly,
Lived on earth our Saviour holy.’
On they sang, and you didn’t have to believe a word of any of it to be moved by upraised voices as united as a swirl of sheep on a moor. Only Moffat was absent from all this, and Steven winged a thought towards him, fifty miles away from his family, his mates.
The organ was thundering out; all at once the church was lighter, brighter. He turned to look at the windows, and saw it must be snowing, whiteness softening the old stained glass. And then he saw something else, and felt a shiver run right through him.
