by Sue Gee
‘Not in that poor lowly stable,
With the oxen standing by . . .’
At the far end of the pew, David Dunn was standing with his hymn book held out before him. As always, he looked set apart, poker-stiff, the weight put on his good leg to ease the pain of the other. But it wasn’t just that. He was weeping, tears streaming unstoppably down his thin hard face.
Had any of the boys realised? Steven glanced at Wigham, standing straight as a cornstalk next to him, and at beefy Hindmarsh, gazing steadfastly ahead, and knew that they had. For a moment he thought: if they snigger, or make something of it afterwards, I’ll send them straight to Straughan. But he sensed that they wouldn’t, that something had touched them, tough lads as they were, and as the last lines rose to the rafters and the organ pealed, Jack Halpin made his way to the front to read the first lesson, a Head Boy rising to the occasion, and Dunn got out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He wasn’t the only one to do so, and for all you knew half the congregation was pretending to go down with a winter cold.
They sat, they waited. Halpin cleared his throat.
‘And they heard the voice of the Lord God . . .’
At the end of the service, when they all filed out, it was snowing really hard.
The snow settled on the town, lacing the Christmas tree and the bare trees round the Square, piling up on the roof tops. It settled on Hencote Moor, where each evening he tramped slowly up the track, flashing the torch before him. Starlight and glittering snow and silence. Indoors, he heaped up the range, let his socks dry on it; stirred soup; heaved down the mattress again, sleeping in the warmth, waking each morning in the winter dawn to the ashy smell of the last of the wood burning down. He heaped it up again, made porridge, pulled on his boots.
‘Margaret,’ he said aloud, and bid the empty cottage farewell, for it was here that her spirit resided. He closed the door.
As he set off down the track again, the sky was flushed with rose and gold, and he beheld the limitless great stretch of white moorland beneath it, empty and sparkling, and knew that he was in a place as beautiful as anywhere on earth, which was why he and Margaret had chosen to live here. And that perhaps it had killed her, choosing not to leave. And he knew that without her, though he might say her name aloud, day after day, trying to hold on to her, its meaning was beginning to slip away.
He stood by the snowy bank on the road, waiting for the bus which would take him into the roar of school life, and thought that his life had become a sequence of soliloquies and crowd scenes. Perhaps, until his marriage, it always had been. Until his marriage he had always kept something back. The only thing he actually felt settled into now was teaching. Which was just as well, because he didn’t know what else he was going to do with his life.
‘All right, boys, we’re having an end-of-term test today.’
‘Sir! Si-ir! You never said.’
‘I’m saying it now. Get your wits about you, I’m going round one by one. McNulty: the date of the Battle of Bosworth.’
‘1485, sir.’ Quick as a flash.
‘Herdman. The Battle of Tewkesbury.’
A slight hesitation. ‘1471, sir.’
‘Very good. Hindmarsh: which battle took place in 1455?’
A deep frown. ‘You’re going backwards, sir.’
‘I am. Where are you going, I wonder.’
A ripple of laughter round the class. In forty minutes like this he could forget almost everything. He knew he wasn’t really a philosopher, like Straughan. He wasn’t fully alert to current events, as Frank was, all the time, though he knew that what was happening in Europe was disturbing. He thought of himself as a jobbing historian, a teacher who believed in middle-year pupils getting a lot of facts under their belts, anchored in a good solid sense of the past. Then, with someone like Frank, they could begin to think critically about the world they lived in.
‘The Battle of St Albans, Hindmarsh, wasn’t it?’
A look of relief. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘I knew you knew. And what was its significance?’
A long pause. ‘Its significance, sir?’
‘Which war began after that battle?’
A long pause, a sudden cheerful light. ‘The Wars of the Roses?’
‘Exactly. Well done.’
He gave them this test two days after the carol service. Then they all went hurtling out to break. He was on playground duty, pacing up and down as the boys kicked a ball or ragged about, the snow scraped into heaps against the walls. Though it might still lie deep on moorland – you could see it on the tops of the hills everywhere you looked – here in the town it had thawed a little, and the roads were clear. The sky was empty, a radiant blue in the sun. A car pulled up at the gates.
He noticed it because you always noticed a car. He noticed it because it put him in mind of Frank’s Imp – not that it was a sports car, but it had a sleek, distinctive look. He noticed it because a woman was driving, something you rarely saw, and he saw Margot Heslop get out, and come walking through the gates. Her height, and her hat, and her long dark coat, brought kicking a ball about not to a halt, exactly, but to a head-turning pause. Apart from the cleaners and cooks and Miss Aickman, Kirkhoughton boys did not often see women.
Steven did not often see women. And though he had begun to feel at ease with everyone at Hepplewick on that rain-filled autumn night, now, as Margot stopped, with a funny little frown, and said, ‘Oh, hello, Mr Coulter,’ he felt as awkward as a lad in the Lower Fifth: away from his mates, voice newly broken, shaving cuts all down his neck, nothing to say for himself.
‘Good morning, Miss Heslop. Have you come about the concert?’
It sounded so gauche, so clumsy, as if he were asking if she’d come about the drains, and she laughed, and he blushed.
‘I have,’ she said. ‘Frank’s going to show me where we’ll be playing. Can you tell me where I’ll find him?’
‘He’ll be in the staffroom.’ He wanted to say that if she could wait a few minutes he’d take her there, but he didn’t feel able to ask her to wait in the cold, and as Johnny Mather came racing by he stopped him. ‘Take Miss Heslop to the staffroom, Mather, she’s come to see Mr Embleton.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Mather was panting, but he pulled himself together. ‘This way, Miss—’ He tried to remember.
‘Miss Heslop,’ said Margot, and then, to Steven, ‘Thank you so much.’
He wanted to say, Not at all, or It’s a pleasure. He said, ‘That’s all right,’ and then a ball from another game shot suddenly past, and he turned to see where it had come from. When he turned back she and Mather were already on their way to the door, and then Turnbull from the Lower Sixth was ringing the bell, striding around the playground as if he owned it, and in moments they had disappeared inside.
‘Sir? Sir, who was that?’
‘A friend of Mr Embleton’s.’ He cleared his throat. ‘One of the musicians.’
‘What musicians, sir?’
Talking to one of the boys he could be like a man again, instead of a gormless youth. ‘Do you not listen in Assembly, Wigham?’
‘I try to, sir.’
‘The Hepplewick Trio.’ Not the kind of name which was often on his lips, though it tripped off Frank Embleton’s tongue as if he’d been saying it since the cradle.
‘Cor.’
‘That’ll do.’
As he stood at the door and watched all the boys pour in, he found himself wondering what the effect on them would have been if Diana Embleton had come dancing across the playground – somehow he imagined her dancing, perhaps in a fur hat – past the banked-up heaps of snow. He found himself imagining the effect upon the smoky staffroom.
‘You’re in a good mood today, sir.’
‘You saw Margot,’ Frank said at the end of the day, as they packed up their things in the staffroom, and he nodded.
‘Did it go well, her visit?’
‘I think she charmed Straughan completely.’ Frank looked at his watch. ‘I must go. See you tomorrow.’ And he was gone, striding across the playground and out to the snow-lined Square, where his car stood with a little knot of boys around it.
‘Sir? Sir, give me the starting handle.’
‘Give it to me, sir!’
‘Your turn, Atkins, I think.’ In a few minutes, Atkins had triumphantly cranked up the engine, and the Imp was roaring away in the dusk.
Steven walked up to the bus stop. He made the journey out along darkening roads to the foot of the moor, and in the post box he found a damp letter from home. He read it indoors with his back to the range, the lamp on the mantelpiece lighting the small lined page, knowing what it would say.
Don’t spend that sad day by yourself, love. Come home. We don’t like to think of you alone . . .
Next day came another.
Andrew’s coming down, but we don’t want to be by ourselves. It would feel terrible without you. The road’s not too bad, and the bus is running. You could stay the night . . .
He stood there thinking.
‘What shall I do?’ he asked the empty room. Would it hurt his parents’ feelings if he went to the Ridleys? Would it hurt everyone if he spent the day here, as he wanted? And he wondered again if being an only child had got him too used to solitude. Stamp collecting. Bird-watching. Out walking with his dog too much, too often. Keeping things to himself.
Had he been lonely? A bit. A bit, and too shy to do much about it. It was Margaret who had dissolved him, turned him from hesitant man into ardent lover. At night he still took her into his arms.
He put down the letter. Without her, faced with the simplest encounter with a woman, he could barely conduct a conversation. He was lost. He was still lost and yearning.
Oh, my love.
He buried his face in his hands.
In the end, he asked Straughan for the afternoon off. It was the first time since his return to school last December that he had used the words ‘My wife,’ and almost no one after that first day back had even alluded to her death. It had happened: they’d said they were sorry. He had been away, now he was here again. This was how men did things: in many ways, it had been a relief.
Only Frank had stretched out a hand.
‘I know it’s hard for you, but—’
Evening sun slanted along the Shambles. They sat outside the Queen’s Head, hearing the thud of darts from the snug, and Frank talked mostly about himself, and his childhood friends, and the sixth-form trip to Bavaria. Then he had drawn Steven into his world, with kindness, encouragement: Look, here’s something different. Life lies ahead. I know it’s hard for you, but—
‘It must have been hard for you, Mr Coulter,’ Straughan said now, leaning back in his seat behind the desk. The room stank of pipe smoke. Next door, Miss Aickman’s office was hung with paper chains.
‘I’ve been glad to be here, Mr Straughan,’ said Steven, and it was true. ‘It’s helped. It’s just this particular day to get through.’
‘Of course.’ Straughan reached for his pipe and lit up. It was hard to know which of them was finding this conversation more difficult. ‘By all means take the time off – you’ll have cleared it with Mr Embleton?’
‘I thought I should see you first.’
‘Very good. Well – I expect you’ll feel better once the day is over.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’
He got to his feet. As he reached the door, Straughan said slowly: ‘You’ve done very well, Mr Coulter. We all appreciate it.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Steven said again, and then he was out in the corridor, the air thick with the smell of mutton stew. David Dunn was walking stiffly along with his book; they nodded to one another.
‘Seen Embleton?’ Steven asked, just for something to say, as they made their way down to the staffroom.
‘Embleton?’’ Dunn made meeting their head of department, a man they both saw every day, sound the most improbable thing in the world. He let Steven open the door for him. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and then, as they both saw Frank stuffing things into his pigeon hole, called out: ‘Embleton! Mr Coulter would like a word.’ He banged his books down on the table.
Frank turned. He and Steven exchanged glances, as so often where Dunn was concerned. They walked together down to the dining hall.
‘Nothing to be Dunn,’ said Frank wryly.
‘He wept in the carol service,’ Steven said. ‘In Once in Royal.’
‘Did he?’ Frank shook his head. ‘Poor fellow. Mind you – it’s enough to set anyone off.’
They came to the roaring hall. ‘I’ve just been to see Straughan,’ said Steven, and explained why, trying to keep it light. ‘I’ll set work, of course. Put a prefect in charge.’
‘That’s fine.’ Frank took his place in the queue. And then: ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘You know I’ll be thinking of you.’ The look he gave him was so kind, so gentle and true, that for a moment Steven was almost taken aback. And the thought flashed again through his mind, as he thanked him, and picked up a chipped china plate: This is a man any girl could fall in love with.
The bus was almost empty as he travelled out to Cawbeck, just two or three women with baskets returning from their trip to town. Steven sat next to the window, half-listening to their talk across the aisle of Christmas shopping, and grandchildren, and the terrible price of things. It was comforting, until he thought that perhaps his parents were grieving not only on his behalf, and for Margaret, whose vitality had lit up their little house in Birley Bank, but for the grandchildren they’d so hoped for. Her parents, too, must feel this.
He looked out across the empty, snow-patterned fields. Plough land and grass land and dry stone walls. Hungry lapwing flew over them, crows stalked about. A vaporous pink sun streaked the clouds. The temperature had dropped again, and though the road was clear you could tell that by evening the heaped-up verges would begin to freeze once more. And he thought again – he couldn’t stop thinking – of the bitter cold of the little room in which Margaret had fallen, and lain choking on the dusty floor, the small fire dying beside her, the snow at the window falling endlessly. He lowered his head.
‘You all right, love?’
The bus had pulled up in the village.
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine, thanks.’
And he got off with the women, clambering down with their baskets, and nodded to the driver refilling his ticket machine.
The street had a deep-winter quiet. Chimney smoke rose into the misty air, firelight flickered behind lace curtains. He walked past the little school, which Margaret and Andrew had both attended as children, their father the headmaster. The single classroom was hung with paper chains; heads bobbed about.
He walked past the pub, where he and Andrew had often had a drink together in what, young as he was, he thought of now as the old days. And there Andrew was, suddenly appearing at the end of the street, raising his hand and walking down towards him. For a moment he looked so like his sister – taller, darker, but with that same clever look, that aquiline family nose – that Steven stopped dead in his tracks. Andrew lowered his hand: he understood, he hesitated. Then he walked on down the street, and reached him, and they embraced.
‘Thank you. Thanks, Andrew.’
Together they turned off to Church Lane, the grass stiff with half-scraped-away snow, and walked beneath the trees. The quiet was broken only by rooks, and then the slow striking of the tower clock, the notes of the half-hour sounding in the still cold air. Half-past two on a winter afternoon. Then there was only the sound of Andrew lifting the latch of the lych gate, and their footsteps on the path through the churchyard, towards the grave where two people stood waiting.
‘You don’t mind?’ Andrew’s breath streamed out before
him.
Steven shook his head. He had so wanted to be alone, to try one more struggling time to summon her presence within the empty cottage, to weep for her, shout for her, with no one to see or to know. But now it felt right as it was: to greet her mother with a kiss, to shake her father’s hand, and for the four of them to stand together in silence, looking at the snow-trimmed headstone, hearing the lapwing cry across the fields.
It was over. He’d done it. Next morning, catching the first bus back to Kirkhoughton, light breaking over the freezing fields, he thought it all through: the silence, the slow walk back to the house, and tea by the fire. The cat lay stretched out before it, as always.
‘Come here, you.’
‘Margaret loved that cat.’
The looking at photographs: the wedding, the picnics on the moor, Margaret and her first years, her second years, all lined up in the school garden, neat as pins, and she in a summer dress – ‘I made that dress for her,’ – smiling into the sun beside them.
‘I wonder how they’re all doing now. That Lizzie Lambert was trouble, remember her saying?’
Bringing her life back to life.
‘More tea? Have another piece of cake, love. And you, Andrew. I don’t know how you men manage on your own.’
Andrew cleared his throat. ‘Not for much longer, Mother.’
A teacup set down in the saucer. ‘What did you say?’
He said it again, suddenly looking quite different. He said he was getting engaged at Christmas, that she was a medical student, Rose MacBride, yes, funny, wasn’t it. And yes, he did have a photograph, here – reaching into his breast pocket, pulling it out. A pretty dark-haired girl in glasses smiled at each of them in turn.
Kisses and handshakes and general excitement, the drinks cupboard opened, the day transformed. And then so poignant.
‘I wish our Margaret was here to know this.’ And then: ‘But it’s grand news, Andrew. Makes the future a bit brighter now.’
