by Sue Gee
‘Tuck in.’
They tucked. Watery, greasy, but hot.
‘So,’ said Frank. ‘How are we getting on?’
‘Pretty well, I think. They’re nice boys.’ One of them, Atkins, was on this table: she gave him a little wave, and he blushed.
‘Have you done much teaching before?’ Steven asked.
‘Oh, yes.’ She began to talk about the children coming to the Hall, some of them really quite talented, going up to Grade 7 or 8, and one, Lucy Gill, going on to the Royal College.
‘I remember her,’ said Frank. ‘I remember her brother, at tennis. They lived out at Elswick Park. What was his name?’
They both tried to remember. And as they fixed on Jonathan, and what had become of him, they were all at once in a to and fro of names, families, houses where pupils had come from or where the Trio had played, at what weddings and parties—
Steven listened, eating his lunch, which for him, as for many of the boys, was often the most sustaining meal of the day. He envisaged, as Frank and Margot talked away, the great sweep of the drive to the Hall, seen only once in driving rain, but unforgotten, with that towering cedar on the lawn. He saw the candlelit drawing room, tried to imagine it on a summer day: a succession of children walking with their music across the rugs to the beautiful grand piano; brought there by their parents, from all the great houses which might lie round Morpeth and beyond: Hall and Park and Manor. Tennis lessons, music lessons, a governess, like the one who had come to the Christmas concert, who’d taught Frank and Margot before the War. Miss Renner?
How easy and animated were these two with one another now: he watched the way Frank leaned towards Margot, her laugh. He knew that the boys had been knocked sideways by Diana Embleton, had overheard a corridor conversation after the concert.
‘Wouldn’t mind learning the cello.’
‘Me neither.’
‘She was—’
‘She blimming was.’
And he had understood it. Had he, for a moment, felt the same, as Diana radiantly took the applause? But now, observing Margot’s bright dark eyes, her poised and attentive air, remembering her passion and delicacy at the piano, he thought there was something about her which – well, he didn’t know how to finish the thought.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Frank, turning to him at last. ‘We’re running away with ourselves, how very rude.’
‘Not at all.’ He smiled, finishing his plate, but beyond the banality of ‘It sounds very interesting’, he didn’t know what to say next. And watching him flounder, Margot felt herself go hot with embarrassment.
Please, she had thought, passing that old white plate, let me do something for you. And now here she was excluding him from a conversation about people he didn’t know from Adam.
She wanted to say: Tell me about your family, but she knew it would only sound patronising. And besides – Frank had told her what had happened. Death wasn’t something to talk about over lunch.
Boys were getting up with their plates, going up to queue for steamed pudding and custard. I’ve made a mess of this moment, she thought, pushing her chair back, and she said: ‘I don’t think I’ve got room for pudding – I’ll just have a bit of a walk-about before the next lessons.’ And she gave them both a smile which felt utterly forced, and picked up her things. ‘Have a good afternoon.’ In moments she had returned the plate to the counter and was walking from the hall.
Where should she go? Too cold outside. She walked along the corridors, empty for once, and saw the staffroom door. A bolt hole, just for a little while.
The room was empty. It stank of sweat and coal and cigarette smoke. She dropped her bags, crossed to open a casement window, stood for a moment looking out at the hills. Plover and crow flew over them, sun came and went in the clouds. Behind her, on the other side of the table, she could feel the warmth of the fire on her legs. She thought: I will sit beside it, and it will calm me, and she went across, and sank into a brown moquette chair with varnished arms – like a nursing chair, she thought, with another little pulse of memory.
‘Where’s Mummy?’
‘She’s resting. You come and sit on my lap, my duck. That’s it.’
From the end of the room, by the pigeon holes, there came a cough.
It startled her so much she almost leapt. There came the sound of a striking match.
Margot got up. She walked towards the end of the room, saw a dark, thin-faced man leaning up against the wall, inhaling deeply from a cigarette, his eyes closed. She’d met him with all the other staff at the concert, and she’d seen him since about the place, though she couldn’t remember his name. Then it came to her: Mr Dunn. David Dunn, as Frank referred to him. Shell-shock. Shell-shock and shrapnel, and invalided out of the trenches. Out of the Somme, where Miss Renner’s fiancé had been – she imagined – blown to pieces. Such a long time ago now. Had Miss Renner ever recovered?
And here Dunn was, away from the crush of the dining hall, away from everyone, the cigarette held in his long thin fingers, which shook a little. He opened his eyes, and saw her.
‘Mr Dunn. I’m so sorry, you startled me.’
But she had startled him, she could see, and she wasn’t even sure if he knew who she was.
‘Margot Heslop. I’m teaching piano here now.’
He nodded. ‘I hope I’m not in your way.’
‘Of course not.’ The words were meaningless. And she turned and left him, as he drew on his cigarette. She returned to the fire, and the chair which looked like a nursing chair, but wasn’t. She sat there, thinking of each of them, retreated from lunch, where you had to be sociable and easy, something clearly impossible for him, and becoming difficult all at once for her, too, though she usually found it so natural.
The term went by.
‘Afternoon, Miss Heslop.’
‘Good afternoon, Turnbull. How have you been getting on?’
‘ ’Fraid I haven’t had much time for practice.’
‘Well, we’ll start with scales, shall we? C Major. Off you go. No, change from the third to the first finger, remember. That’s it. And now with the left hand. And again. Good. Now let’s try C Minor. Can you hear how different it sounds?’
‘It’s a bit sad, isn’t it?’
‘It is, you’re quite right. But rather lovely? Try it again.’
Tender melancholy, in fits and starts. There was an awful lot of this: hunched shoulders, heavy breathing, tongue sticking out, as one after another they stumbled through. The right hand, the left hand, the great leap to both together.
‘Play those first three bars again. And once more.’
‘Don’t think I’ll ever be much good, Miss Heslop.’
‘The more you can practise, the better you’ll get. See you next week.’
But there was also—
‘Good afternoon, Miss Heslop.’
‘Good afternoon, Herron. How have you been getting on?’
‘A bit better, I think.’
Tall and dark, Tom Herron, with a voice quite thoroughly broken, and an easy but respectful manner. And he could play.
‘Scales and arpeggios first.’
Up and down the keyboard, confident and good to hear.
‘Good! Very good. Let’s hear the Bach now.’
Pages turned, an intake of breath. Away. The light at the windows darkening, lights going on through the school. The sound of the football players returning, tramping through the gates. And in here: what a lovely thing.
‘Well done! Let’s just take it again from the middle, try the left hand again from here—’
‘I find those two bars really hard.’
‘They are hard. Try again. Good. And again.’ She got up to turn the lights on. The windows on to the playground were suddenly black. ‘Now let’s go through it all once more before we finish.’
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And he went through it all once more and the shabby old hall was filled with something beautiful and strong. She could hear people going past outside stop to listen. The bell for the end of the day rang out.
‘Very good. Thank you.’
‘Thank you, Miss Heslop.’
‘Mr Embleton tells me you’ve won a place at Oxford. Reading History? Congratulations. I hope you’ll manage to keep up your music.’
‘I’ll try. See you next week, Miss Heslop.’
And then it began: the packing up of the scores, the walk through the milling, dimly-lit corridors to the staffroom for her coat. Masters coming out with their bags of books, as eager to get home as the boys.
‘Goodnight, Miss Heslop. That sounded rather good.’
‘Thank you, Mr Armstrong. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, Miss Heslop.’
‘Goodnight, Mr Gowens.’
Goodnight, Mr Duggan, Mr Dunn, limping along. Out they all came.
‘Goodnight, Steven.’
There he was, in his scarf and greatcoat, carrying his hat and his bag, coming towards her through the throng, and did she imagine it, or did his easy smile and manner with the boys change when he saw her? Did he look somehow embarrassed?
‘Goodnight, Miss Heslop. Margot.’
And he was past her, calling out to one of his class, and gone. Sometimes he’d be gone by the time she got into the staffroom. Frank had often left by then.
‘Meetings,’ he said, when she asked him once why he was always in such a rush at the end of the day, but he didn’t explain and she didn’t ask. Frank had always had a life away from all of them. Friends in London. Dreary political friends, probably.
Inside the staffroom she took down her long winter coat from the peg and settled her hat on her head. Gloves, music bag. Handbag. Another week done. And another whole week to go.
She walked out of the school, to where her car stood waiting beneath the leafless trees in the Square. A bus was standing at the top, the engine running. She saw Steven at the lit-up window, talking to a boy across the aisle. Could he see her?
The sky above the ring of hills round the town was dark. Perhaps just a little lighter, for a little longer, as the winter ebbed away. The bus began its slow descent, passing the shops and the war memorial, passing her. She lifted her hand in a wave. Half-lifted it.
2
Spring on the moor. Just the first hint of it, tough little shoots of moorland flowers here and there, the first brush of green on the thorn tree. March winds, spring rain, sudden sun lighting the fresh new grass and the sailing clouds, the rise and fall of birds. The water-butt brimmed and shone. Then the first lambs began to call from the farm below.
It was still dark in the evenings, but the days were growing longer, perceptibly longer, as he got off the bus and crossed to the foot of the track. His torchlight flashed over the letter box. Often nothing there. A letter from Andrew Ridley once – You must come up to Edinburgh. Rose wants to meet you. Then nothing, for days at a time. Then suddenly a hand he didn’t recognise, in a good cream envelope. He tucked it into his pocket, climbed the track as the first stars appeared, the torchlight dancing before him.
Fresh wood into the range, lamps lit, kettle on, a stab of curiosity as he slit open the envelope, with its graceful hand and smudged postmark.
And what was this? Margot Heslop was inviting him for tea.
Spring at Hepplewick. Just the first hint of it, still early March, but the buds on the shaggy forsythia at the door were a sharp fresh green. Rain in the night, in pools on the flagstones, gleaming; the first pale sun filtered through the dense wet branches of the cedar into the shady drawing room, striking marble mantelpiece, brass fender, upraised piano lid.
Chanson du Matin, the kind of thing her father loved her to play. ‘It reminds me of your mother, darling – she loved Elgar.’
Do it now, do it before breakfast, still in your dressing gown, the door to the hall flung wide, and a window open at last.
Morning! A soft spring morning in March.
Wet grass glistening all the way down to the ha-ha. The cows out last week from their long winter months in the gloomy sheds; everything so quiet now you could almost hear them grazing. Wet gravel, where her father’s footsteps came crunching in from the lane, back from a walk at dawn. Then came the pattering dog.
Chanson du Matin – light, sprightly, joyful. She sang the bright tune as she played, and the footsteps stopped on the flags, where the dog stopped too, for a drink. In the hall the grandfather clock was striking the half-hour – Dah-dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah-dah! – perhaps one of the first musical sounds she had ever been aware of, even before her mother’s playing. Half-past seven. Boots pulled off in the porch, the front door pushed open, footsteps in the hall.
She finished as he came into the room with the dog, bringing the smell of grass, damp tweed and animal, morning air.
‘Lovely, Margot. You’re feeling better.’
She turned on the piano stool. The dog padded over to greet her and she bent to stroke his head.
‘Was I feeling worse?’
‘You’ve been looking a bit pale.’
‘“A bit peaky, my duck. A senna pod, that’s what you need.’’’
He laughed. ‘Oh, dear. And what are you doing, now it’s half-term?’
She got up. ‘Just an ordinary day – practice with everyone this afternoon. For the concert at Easter.’
‘Very good. Practising here, I hope.’
‘Yes. And then—’ she was walking to the door. ‘Tomorrow Steven Coulter is coming to tea.’
‘Steven Coulter—’ He frowned, trying to remember. ‘The History teacher. In Frank’s department.’
‘Yes. I’ll go and have my bath now.’
Out to the hall, and up the curving staircase. Chanson du Matin hummed all along the landing. She lay in the bath and swished the shining water.
Her letter had hoped he was well, that it was not too cold up on Hencote Moor. Frank had given her his address – she hoped he didn’t mind. It’s always so busy, we don’t have a chance to talk. And she’d ask Frank to bring him over to Hepplewick, but Frank always had so much on out of school, and he’d said he was going to London for half-term. She thought there were buses.
There were. Steven took the usual hourly one into Kirkhoughton, and then the bus to Morpeth, a good twenty miles, so he’d had to leave straight after an early lunch, bread and cheese.
He was spending the half-term mornings in the garden again, digging and sowing, feeling the sun and wind on his face, a good feeling. Birds flew by, and with the high mournful pipe of the lapwing he thought again of the walks he and Margaret had taken, down to the river, across springy grass to the fort. The wind carried the cries of the lambs with their ewes, all out now, speckling the moor with white.
Darling, it’s just as it was . . .
But today was different.
The bus followed the Wansbeck, stopping in riverside villages where washing blew and children played on the banks. It drew up in Morpeth, outside the town hall. A lovely old town, the county town, with a medieval bridge, and places to see properly one day: a castle, a court house, the church where Emily Davison lay buried. The streets were crowded with shoppers, grand cars parked outside the bank and a big department store. When he found that the bus to Hepplewick and beyond wasn’t due for another half-hour, he took out the map and began to walk.
She’d invited him for three o’clock – so there’ll still be some light, and I can show you around – and as he set out the town clock was chiming the hour. Within a mile or so he was out in open country, and it felt prosperous, ploughed fields greening up with early wheat, cattle grazing in parkland. He passed a lodge, an avenue, glimpsed creeper, a pillared portico. Was that the Hall? No – he remembered the village where Frank had slowed down in
the pouring rain, and now he came to it, houses clustered round the green, a little shop, a church. A lane stretched out of it, bordered with oak and elm.
The sky was streaked with red, the sun beginning to sink. And now he was suddenly nervous. He ran his finger over the map. Hepplewick Hall. Within fifteen minutes, he was at the open gates.
He stopped, seeing the place in daylight for the first time, remembering almost nothing of the outside, only the driving rain, the dash from the car towards the porch, the welcome and his crippling shyness. Then music and candlelight and his aching grief.
Darling, I need you beside me—
But she hadn’t been, and she wasn’t here now. She never would be.
With this thought, suddenly slammed into him as if for the first time, he stood very still, looking ahead at the house, the light just beginning to fade. Smoke rose from tall chimneys into the gathering cloud. The huge cedar he now remembered darkened the lawn on the right, and an old swing hung there, moving just a little in the raw spring air.
He took a breath, folded the map, put it back in his pocket. It was cold, and he couldn’t go on standing here. He walked up the curving drive. The long stately lawn ran down to the right, past a sundial and on to a ha-ha, with cattle beyond, huge and dark in the failing light. His feet crunched on the gravel. No one about. He went on, noting a little summer house across the garden, the pele tower on to which the house had been grafted, and the arch to a stable yard beyond. Then the gravel became flagstones, and he saw the dog’s dish set by the porch, and knew that the dog would steady him, as the door inside the porch swung open.
‘You found it!’
‘I did, thanks.’
He lifted his hat, and as they smiled at one another he felt some of his nervousness evaporate. Behind her he could see the glow of the fire in the hall.
‘It’s so nice of you to come all this way.’
