by Sue Gee
‘Just so long as there’s not a war,’ Mr Ridley said suddenly.
‘Oh, John, not now. Pour us another drink.’
The bus was slowing down as the early-morning lights of Kirkhoughton came into view. Tiny snowflakes began to blow against the windscreen. Steven thought of himself lying awake after supper, in the room which had been Margaret’s when she was a girl, and which still had worn copies of Peter Rabbit and the others in a little white book case, and one or two dresses still hanging in the cupboard. It had felt both comforting and the saddest thing in the world.
They pulled up in Bridge Street; boys and girls clambered on, winter-pale beneath their caps and felt hats. The bus climbed the hill to the Square, the windscreen wipers going now. Everyone got off in a flurry of snow.
‘Morning, Mr Coulter.’
‘Morning, Potts.’
Already the lights of the school were coming on, the caretaker opening up. Steven and Potts walked together across the playground, as if it were any old day.
5
Six o’clock on a winter evening, a time when the school was usually empty, shut up for the night. Tonight: a buzz. Staff had stayed on to do their marking in an empty classroom or in corners of the staffroom. In came Molly with tea and sandwiches, and out she went again, rattling down the corridor past the boys pouring back into school from tea at home.
‘They’re here,’ said Frank, putting his books away at the sound of car doors slamming in the Square.
And if Margot Heslop had turned heads when she walked across the playground, the arrival of the Trio stopped people dead in their tracks.
The cars had pulled up at the gates. The headlamps, the running boards, the polish! The three musicians, in evening dress, got out and walked towards the main entrance. One, a slight young man, carried a violin case; another man, taller, older, carried a cello; and at the sight of them all, of tall straight elegance, of a soft fur hat – Steven had been right – on fair hair, and a dancing smile, something happened to everyone. Glamour was not a word you heard very often in Kirkhoughton Boys, but the atmosphere was utterly changed. Miss Aickman went out to greet them, stopped at the sight of the hat.
‘This way,’ she said after a moment. ‘Follow me.’ She was given a dazzling smile.
‘They can leave their coats in here.’ Frank was at the staffroom door, as they all came down the corridor. ‘Thanks, Miss Aickman.’ Handshakes, kisses on the cheek. ‘Well done, everyone, come in.’ They followed him into the battered room, with its smell of coal and pipe smoke, its pigeon holes, ash trays, scratched old table, and worn-out chairs by the fire.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Frank. ‘The Hepplewick Trio.’
A general murmur, a getting to feet and moving of books on the table as cello and violin were laid carefully down. Frank made the introductions: Mr Heslop, of Hepplewick Hall; his daughter, the pianist Margot Heslop. ‘My sister Diana, the cellist. Mr George Liddell, violinist and leader of the Trio.’
And he went round the room, fifteen or so staff, and everyone knowing that half these names would be forgotten. ‘Mr Armstrong, Mr Gowens, Mr Dunn, a member of my department. Mr Coulter you know, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Margot was smiling at him, at everyone; Diana was radiant. George made a series of little bows. Steven, surprised at how drawn to them he felt, seeing them all again, was once more cloaked in shyness.
Still. Surely he could observe the courtesies.
‘May I take your coat?’
He moved towards Margot, and she smiled again – not with Diana’s lit-up expression, as if she were greeting the only person in the room, but with her own grace. That was how he thought of it, later.
‘Thank you.’
He helped her slip off the coat, long, dark and heavy, beautifully lined, and laid it on the back of a chair. Thomas Heslop was helping Diana with hers; she carefully took off her hat. Out from beneath the soft fur came that mass of hair; out from a little bag came a hairbrush, a bottle of scent. In a moment the smoky room was full of a cloud of something heady, warm, alluring.
‘I say,’ said Armstrong, astonishingly, and everyone laughed.
Straughan suddenly appeared in his gown, dwarfing the room as usual.
‘I see the entertainment has already begun. Good evening, everyone. Heslop.’
The two men shook hands. Then came more introductions.
‘How do you do, sir.’ Beside Straughan, thought Steven, George looked like a boy from the Upper Fourth. Lower Fourth, even, so small was he. Had he really commanded the room, that autumn evening?
‘Very good to have you all here,’ said Straughan. ‘The boys are looking forward to the evening greatly. And when you are ready—’
A general air of readiness took hold. Out from their cases came violin and cello; Margot for a moment flexed her fingers. Straughan cleared his throat.
‘Miss Aickman will show you the facilities.’
‘Of course.’ She appeared at his side. ‘If you’d all follow me once more—’
Diana picked up her cello. Heslop stepped forward.
‘Let me—’
She flashed him a smile. ‘No, really, thank you. I can manage.’
‘We’re off!’ George took his violin, flung up the other hand, and led them from the room.
As they entered the assembly hall, the noise of a hundred and fifty voices died away, and the boys rose to their feet. One or two programmes fell to the floor – Miss Aickman had run them off on the inky old Gestetner – and there was the usual scrabbling about. Staff took their places, Thomas Heslop sat down next to Frank, Straughan climbed the steps to the stage and stood waiting as the Trio followed.
It had taken four removal men to push the school piano up the ramp at the side, and the sight of it sitting up there, polished hard, but still a sad old ordinary thing, was extraordinary. More extraordinary still was the sight of Margot, who was accustomed, as Frank told Steven, to a grand in almost every house they ever played in, walking towards it, setting up her music and sitting down on a piano stool normally sat upon only by Miss Aickman. She adjusted the height, stretched out her hands. Her long dark dress brushed a floor scuffed and scratched from years of announcements, prize-givings, school shoes, chairs scraped back.
George and Diana were setting their scores on the music stands; Diana sat down. The midnight blue of her taffeta gown caught the light; her hair and her lovely face caught the light. Every eye in the school was upon her, you could feel it, as Straughan stepped forward.
‘Good evening, boys.’ He cleared his throat, thickened with thirty years of pipe smoke. He said that it gave him great pleasure to introduce the Hepplewick Trio; that as they would all see from their programmes, they were about to hear a fine concert of classical music; and that he would hand over now to the violinist and leader of the Trio, Mr Liddell, who would tell them all a little more of what they were about to hear.
George stepped forward. He was small, he was vitally present. In his light warm voice he introduced Margot and Diana, and told the boys they had known one another as children, and in fact their old governess was here tonight, he could see her, there in the middle. One or two boys turned round, and one or two prefects hissed at them not to be so rude. But Steven, too, though he did not turn, was curious to see someone whom Frank and Margot’s conversations had made so important. Beside him, Frank murmured that he would introduce her.
George went on. He said that they had formed the Trio on his return from the Royal College in London in 1929, and that their repertoire encompassed some of the loveliest music in Europe. Tonight they were playing a trio by Mendelssohn, a nineteenth-century German composer he was sure they would all have heard of. As they knew – he used the generous phrase often used when the speaker knows that the listener probably knows nothing – Mendelssohn spent some time in England, and became a beloved guest in this c
ountry.
‘He was one of those people so gifted it makes you feel rather faint.’ You could almost feel the smiles amongst his audience. ‘He wasn’t only a great musician,’ continued George, and spoke of his painting, his poetry, the languages he spoke, his athleticism.
‘And his range was enormous: mighty things like Elijah; a sublime violin concerto, and lots of chamber music – music for three or four people to play in their own homes, or their friends’ homes: a great European tradition, of course.’
He made it all interesting, individual and alive, had the tone for a school concert just right. Steven, watching his third years, could see that he had caught them, that they wanted, now, to hear what was to come.
‘So,’ said George, and his smile swept the darkened hall. ‘Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor. It lasts for about thirty minutes, probably all we need on a cold winter night, with homes to get back to.’ His smile deepened. ‘Let us begin.’
He stepped back, they tuned up. Then he lifted his violin, and glanced at the others; once again Steven saw that swift little current run between them.
With the very first bars you could feel the whole hall sit up. And begin to swoon? Was that possible, with these boys? But Diana, on the cello, opened the piece with a phrase that caught you immediately. Margot was playing lightly alongside, then in came the violin, picking up that lovely tune. And as the three of them began to develop an utterly compelling relationship of parts, a deep, attentive silence settled over the hall. Now and then came a cough, or a shifting in a seat, but it quickly stopped.
Enraptured, thought Steven, that’s what we are.
He was astonished to find himself thinking such a thing, here in a school hall usually filled with dutiful listening to announcements, hymns belted out, yawns and shuffling feet. And for the first time in a year, though he thought of Margaret with the same deep yearning, though he began to write to her once more – Darling, I wish you were with me now to hear this – he was conscious of feeling better, lifted and – yes – excited. He was watching all of them, but after a few minutes it was Margot who held his attention, playing so intently, going right into the music, as if it were a living thing.
Which it was, of course. How had he not known this, all these years?
The first movement ended. There was a cough or two. The second began, opened by the piano, tender and enquiring. And when cello and violin entered it was as if they spoke, saying, Yes – we hear you and we are with you. A couple of seats away he could hear jokey Donald Hindmarsh give a great sigh, and turned to see him lean back, and close his eyes. Steven closed his own, and let the music take him.
Gentleness and sadness gave way to something joyful and bright. By the fourth movement, as he opened his eyes once more, the playing was of such passionate intensity that he, like the boys around him, was almost on the edge of his seat. There was a wild, almost frantic race towards a crescendo, and suddenly, with a great triumphant uplifting of the bows, it was over.
The silence in the hall remained unbroken. Then came a roar of applause.
The musicians stood up, and bowed. They smiled briefly at one another, and bowed again. As the applause went on, they stood there smiling, gazing out over the audience with what was clearly both exhaustion and enormous pleasure. Steven looked from one to the other: at George’s animation; Margot’s slender self-possession, after all that outpouring; at Diana’s mesmerising charm. And then he saw something he had seen before, and felt himself go very still.
George was raking the rows of boys and staff: clearly looking, as he had done on that rain-swept autumn night at Hepplewick, for particular approval. And this time there was no mistaking whose face he sought, and found, as he gave a smile which lit his whole being with elation, and bowed again.
Part Four
1
1938
He came back. He was pale as a handkerchief, hollow-eyed, but he’d put on a bit of weight and here he was, walking slowly across the playground with McNulty in the teeth of a January wind, and arriving in class in time for Register.
‘Moffat?’
‘Here, sir.’
Steven looked up. ‘Well done. Good to have you back.’
‘Thanks, Mr Coulter.’
His pencil ran on, down the column of names. ‘Potts.’
‘Here, sir.’
He ticked them all off. Rigby. Stoker. Wanless. Wigham.
‘Wilson.’
‘Here, sir.’
He closed the book. The bell rang out along the corridors which stank of disinfectant; there was the usual clatter of desk lids as everyone got up and filed out for Assembly.
New Year. A new term, laughingly known as Spring.
It was marked by the fresh sound of the piano, used now not just for Miss A. to bang out the hymns in Assembly, but for individual lessons, once a week, from Miss Heslop.
Wednesday afternoons were for sport: out of the school and down the hill to the fields across from Bridge Street, football on grass stiff with frost or churned by winter rain into mud. Last autumn the rain had stopped play for a fortnight, and the burn almost burst its banks. Now it was no worse than the usual foul January days, and Out In All Weathers was almost the school motto. Down they all tramped with their kit.
But Wednesdays were also all at once for Music, scheduled into the timetable with Art, which no one had ever taken much notice of.
‘What’s that supposed to be, Wigham?’
‘A still life. Apples in a dish.’
‘They look like cricket balls.’
‘You look like a cricket ball, Stoker. Go and stuff yourself.’
Powder paint and sugar paper; twigs in a vase.
‘Like being back at Infants.’
So it went. And so, until the Christmas concert, had been the whole idea of music. Soppy stuff. Wets like Alfie Stote warbling away once a year. And anyway, if you learned an instrument you had to practise, and who had a piano at home?
Some did. Some had had lessons at home before. Some, now, just wanted to have a go.
‘Morning, Miss Heslop.’
Footsteps over the worn scuffed floor.
‘Good morning, Atkins. Come and sit down.’
Fiddling about with the handles on the piano stool, putting off the moment.
‘I think that’s fine, now, isn’t it? Let’s make a start.’
‘Morning, Miss Heslop.’
Simple Pieces for Beginners open on the stand.
‘Good morning, Sparke. Shall we begin with a few scales? Give me C Major, two octaves.’
‘Morning, Miss Heslop.’
Dog-eared Book Two, riffled through for simple arrangements of Haydn and Grieg.
‘It was this one, I think, wasn’t it, Pearson? How have you been getting on?’
‘Not too bad.’
Stumbling through, the left hand so difficult, suddenly sounding a chord with both hands and turning to beam.
‘Well done! On you go.’
Wintry sun breaking through the cloud above the playground. The piano sounding, hesitant and slow. Joyful bursts of achievement. She’d been doing this for years: in private houses in Morpeth, in the villages around, in the drawing room at the Hall. This was different. For all sorts of reasons, this felt very different.
Clatter of plates in the dining hall, the smell of bubble-and-squeak.
‘Third finger for that A-flat, I think.’
Leaning forward to pencil a 3 on the score. A bell ringing down the corridor.
‘We’ll have to stop now. Keep it up, Pearson, you’re doing well.’
‘Thanks, Miss Heslop. See you next week.’
Margot stacked up the music, pushed the stool back into place, took comb and mirror from her bag. The sun pouring in from high windows was brighter; dust motes spun in the air. Outside, the roar o
f dinner. In here, in the empty hall, with its dusty shafts of light, she stood for a moment full of the kind of nerves which might well precede a concert but not, surely, days at a hill-town boys’ school. She bit her lip. Then she turned from the light, ran the comb through her hair, a finger over her eyebrows. There.
‘Hello, Frank.’
‘Margot. How are you getting on?’
‘Quite well, I think. Hello, Mr Coulter. Steven.’
A stiff little nod, the corridor swarming.
‘Joining us for lunch?’
‘Yes. I was going to bring a sandwich, but—’
‘A sandwich won’t keep out the cold.’
That was nanny, buttoning up their coats for winter walks. Ice in the puddles along the lane, a red sun sinking in a freezing sky. ‘You need something hot on a day like this, my ducks.’
‘That’s how our Nanny used to talk,’ she said to Steven Coulter, and was given a fleeting smile. Of course – why should he care about nannies, the Hall, their past?
‘How has your morning been?’ she asked Frank, as boys poured by.
‘Keep to the left!’ he called out, and then: ‘Tedious Acts of Parliament.’
They made their way to the dining hall, so noisy you could hardly hear yourself think.
Frank gestured for her to go ahead in the queue. She took a white plate, turned and passed it to Steven, behind her. The gesture was automatic, as if they were sitting next to one another at a dinner party, where you passed everything courteously to your neighbour before serving yourself. It also felt intimate: Please, let me do something for you.
‘Thank you.’ He smiled, more warmly, and she smiled back, turning to take her own plate and receive a dolloping ladle of bubble-and-squeak and a mountain of mashed potato.
‘That’s plenty!’
They scanned the hall for places. Frank nodded towards the top of the Fifth-form table; they made their way there and sat down. Staff duty at lunchtime rotated, he told her, pouring water for them all, as Steven passed bread. The boys saw enough of their form teacher; it was good to sit with other boys, keeping an eye on table manners and getting to know them outside class.
