by Sue Gee
It was the Easter holidays now, and, as every year, the Trio was giving a concert in St Mary’s, Hepplewick, whose window ledges were full of spring flowers in jam jars.
‘Lovely,’ said George, pushing open the door for a morning rehearsal. Diana and Margot had parked their little cars on the roadside outside the churchyard wall; he’d left his bicycle in the porch. He walked down the aisle with his violin case and stood in the middle, breathing in the scent of primroses and prayer books, candle wax and cold stone. ‘Gorgeous. If you could bottle Anglicanism you’d make a fortune. I don’t believe a word of it, but oh, how it soothes the soul.’
‘My soul needs soothing,’ said Diana, setting down the cello beside him and breathing deeply. ‘All anyone can talk about at home is politics. Frank at breakfast – he goes on and on. My father doesn’t seem so worried, but he’s always talking about some Mosley man, do you know who he is? Daddy seems to think he’s a good thing, but Frank gets so upset.’ She put her head on one side. ‘What do you think?’
‘I’d put my money on Frank, if I were you,’ said George lightly. ‘He generally knows what’s what.’ And then: ‘Mosley’s a thug.’
‘That’s what Father says.’ Margot walked past them with her music case. ‘Oh, I hate it all, don’t you?’ She went up to the piano. Like the one at Kirkhoughton, it was old and worn, but kept well in tune and in truth made a sound rather better than the dilapidated organ, rarely used, for which the vicar was always fund-raising. She lifted the lid, and ran her hands over the keyboard.
‘How’s that?’
‘Fine,’ said George. ‘I suppose Frank’s coming to the concert,’ he added to Diana, as she picked up the cello again. They walked up towards the chancel.
‘You never know what he’s going to do these days. He’s always off to some meeting or other. Mummy never knows if he’s going to be there for supper or anything.’
‘Shocking.’
‘Well, it is a bit inconsiderate.’
Their voices rang out in the clear acoustic.
‘That’s not like Frank.’ Margot finished a couple of scales and looked up. ‘What are all these meetings he goes to?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about his friend?’ asked George, setting the violin case in the front pew and opening it up. ‘That tall quiet chap – Steven Whatnot. Will he come, do you think?’
Margot studied the keys. ‘He might. I’ve sent him an invitation.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t.’ She picked up her music case, pulled out a score. ‘Come on, let’s make a start.’
In the ebbing spring light of the afternoon, Steven was back from Birley Bank, his knapsack stuffed with clean shirts, a fruit cake and a pie; as the bus went on up the hill he crossed the road, and lifted the lid of the letter box. There had been nothing for days, and he was expecting nothing. But here – a little package. He took it out, saw the Morpeth postmark, and her hand. How curious: what could this be? Whatever it was, he was glad to hear from her, he realised, and he dropped it into his pocket, and set off up the track.
As he climbed he thought once again about his visit, and the stiff little letter he had written afterwards. Thank you for a very nice afternoon, and for showing me round . . . I did enjoy talking to your father, and hearing you play . . . I expect I shall see you at school again before too long. Until then, best wishes . . .
Of her mother’s death, of his own bereavement, he said nothing: it felt too intimate, in the kind of thank-you letter he had been taught to write. And that sudden flood of emotion, his utter silence – it must have embarrassed her. But as soon as he’d posted it, he wondered once more if he had offended her with his determination to leave on his own. When they saw one another at school she just gave a nod and a smile.
The cold April wind blew over the moor. Climbing, he thought, too, of today’s visit home, of the mixture of guilt and tenderness he always felt on leaving his parents. They wanted him home, he knew they did, though they never said.
‘Goodbye, Mother.’ He lifted the knapsack in the tiny hall. ‘Thanks again for all this.’
‘Goodbye, Steven, love.’ She stood on tiptoe for his kiss. ‘Come again soon.’
‘I will. Chin up.’
Out to the workshop, with its fresh smell of sawdust and timber.
‘Bye, Dad.’
A chair leg was clamped in a turner. There was sawdust on his overall, and some in his hair, going grey.
‘Bye, lad. You’re doing well.’
‘See you again soon.’
‘That’ll be grand.’
Waiting for the bus in the village, everything known and familiar since childhood, he tried to imagine returning, living at home again, and knew it would be impossible. Leaving the cottage, the moor, would be a final goodbye to his marriage: it would feel like a dream, and he couldn’t bear that.
Something else felt like a dream, hearing the quacking of ducks on the river, watching a little boy spin by on a tricycle in the peaceful street: events in Europe.
At school they felt more real: it wasn’t only Frank, flinging down a copy of The Times in the staffroom, open to show a grainy photograph of Vienna with swastikas fluttering all along the Ringstrasse; it wasn’t only David Dunn’s set face as he unfolded his own Morning Post. There was quite a lot of talk about the uncertain future now, and not just in the staffroom.
‘Me Dad says there’d be call-up.’
‘Me Mam says I’m too young.’
He came to the top of the track, where packed earth became grass, springy underfoot again now. The ewes and their lambs were spread out everywhere, their questioning and answering cries carried far on the wind. There was another sound, too, a shouting he at first put down to the farmer calling his dog, but it wasn’t that. He stopped, trying to make it out, but he couldn’t, and he crossed to the cottage, where the daffodils Margaret had planted in the first autumn of their marriage nodded by the door.
Inside, he set down the knapsack, topped up the range and set the kettle on top.
Then he pulled out the little brown-paper package, and slit it open with his penknife.
He put his hand inside, felt an envelope, and the rustle of tissue paper. For a moment he had a child’s excitement. Then he withdrew it, a small white square, and unwrapped his handkerchief, beautifully washed and ironed.
Well.
How stupid of him to have dropped it. But astonishing, how pleased and touched he felt.
He opened the envelope.
Dear Steven,
Thank you so much for your letter. We loved having you here, and I hope you reached home easily. I found this by the fire! One other thing – we’re giving our annual Eastertide concert at St Mary’s in Hepplewick soon. I enclose a little advertisement – it would be lovely if you could come.
With all good wishes,
Margot
He read the advertisement, he sniffed the handkerchief. It smelled of some pretty kind of soap, quite different from the smell of the shirts and handkerchiefs his mother laundered for him.
Well.
But how strange, really. She could have given it to him at school. She could simply have said: You dropped this, and by the way there’s a concert. Or she could have put it in a paper bag, and put it in his pigeon hole with a note. But since term had begun again they’d only spoken in passing, and now she’d gone to all this trouble—
Wind rattled the door, and then the shouting he’d heard a few minutes ago came closer, and now he could hear the words.
‘Left, right, left, right!’
Feet were tramping over the moor, somewhere behind the cottage: he went outside, and walked round. In the last of the light he made out the bottle-green of the Northumberland Fusiliers, perhaps thirty men marching down towards the track. He saw their heavy backpacks, the flash o
f red on their caps, and then, on their shoulders, the silhouetted guns.
4
The church was almost full when he arrived, and he was almost late, the bus to Kirkhoughton delayed for once, so he’d missed the connection to Morpeth. He slipped into a pew at the back, next to two elderly ladies, and picked up the programme before him. He remembered the composers from the advertisement Margot had sent: Dvořák of course he knew of, but he’d never heard of the Dumky Trios. And he’d never heard of Frank Bridge, opening the concert. Something modern, which he might not like. He glanced at the programme notes, signed with George Liddell’s initials: Benjamin Britten had been Bridge’s pupil once, apparently. He knew nothing of Britten, either.
He looked round, saw that the audience was more mixed than the one at the Hall last autumn: fewer grand cars were parked outside, and this felt more like a village affair, more old suits, print frocks and cotton hats than linen and tweed. Did he recognise anyone? Yes, he could see Thomas Heslop up at the front, next to a couple he remembered from the autumn: the Embleton parents. But no Frank – he hadn’t heard from him since the end of term, when he’d said he was going down to London.
‘What will you do there?’
‘Browse in the bookshops, I expect. See friends. And I’ve got one or two meetings.’
Steven didn’t like to ask what they were, guessed they might be political.
‘The Fusiliers are out on the moor in manoeuvres now – I see them quite a bit. It looks pretty serious.’
‘It is serious,’ said Frank, picking up stuff from the table. ‘You know it is. I wish I could get my family to see.’ He piled papers into his bag and closed it. ‘Still – have a good Easter, Steven.’ And with that ravishing smile, and a gentle clap-clap on the shoulder, he was gone, swinging his briefcase, the boys outside swarming round the little red Imp as usual.
The tower clock was striking the half-hour. Early evening sunlight streamed serenely through stained glass, candles burned palely in the chancel. A concert in a country church: it all felt at such a distance from the possibility of war – except for one of the windows which Steven, looking around him, now noticed on the far side of the north aisle. A fallen knight in armour lay beneath the unfurled red and white flag of the George Cross, gazing up at the cream-robed figure of Christ, whose hand was outstretched towards him. Beneath the leaded frame ran a legend, but from here he couldn’t read it.
Sentimental? He thought it was, and he suspected that someone like Frank would dislike the whole idea of it, religion and patriotism intermingled, and yet it was hard not to be moved by the looks of love and compassion that passed between those figures.
‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.’
As the audience fell silent, a cheery young vicar welcomed them all to the annual concert at Eastertide. The Hepplewick Trio – their very own trio, you might say – needed no introduction, but they went from strength to strength. Under the leadership of George Liddell, who of course had studied at the Royal College in London, they were always adding to their repertoire, and tonight were opening with a composer who would bring everyone up to date with modern times. Frank Bridge. Super. So now please welcome them.
Out they filed from the vestry. Bow tie, midnight-blue taffeta, black silk. Steven thought it was silk, as they bowed to the applause, and took their places. Whatever it was, Margot looked poised, graceful – always that – and, sitting down at the piano, marvellously remote. They tuned up. Then that magical swift glance ran between the three of them – Ready? Yes!
Even from here, at the back of the church, he could feel her entire concentration as they began to play, and he thought of the dark spring evening when she had played just for him and her father, of the grave quiet beauty of that fugue. Had he thought himself unmusical? It wasn’t true. He was learning to take pleasure in music, wanting to understand it, feeling musicality begin to unfurl within him.
The Dvořák was full of contrasts. He looked at the programme notes again. Dumka – a Ukrainian folk song. ‘Sometimes of elegiac and meditative character, sometimes exuberant’ – and what he was listening to now was certainly that, sprightly and uplifting. But as they played on, each movement kept changing, now dancing, now singing wistfully.
The applause at the end was enthusiastic, though he noticed, as the Trio took their bows, that the smiles they gave were perhaps less radiant than usual. Certainly George was less radiant. Had he hoped, until the last minute, that someone in particular would be here?
They bowed for the last time, stood upright once again. Did he imagine it, or was Margot giving one swift look across the pews? I’m here, he wanted to tell her, suddenly full of a nervous excitement, as the clapping died away. I’m here, right at the back.
The interval was noisy with talk: everyone knew one another. Should he go up to the front, and greet Thomas Heslop? Looking across at him through the throng, deep in conversation with the Embletons, he decided against it: he’d say hello afterwards, not interrupt. And there was something about Embleton he couldn’t warm to on sight: fair-haired like his wife and children, he perhaps had been handsome when he was young. But now he was beefy, a little too red in the face, and a bit complacent. Even at this distance, he gave off the air of someone who had never had to struggle, or ask many questions about his place in the world, and now he was holding forth, you could tell, and his pretty wife – surely it was from her that Frank and Diana had inherited their charm and good looks – had stopped listening, and was waving to a friend. Embleton and Heslop were left up against one another, in some kind of disagreement.
Steven got up. What he really wanted was to do was go to the vestry, to tell them all how good they were; to tell Margot. He saw her face turn to his, their eyes meeting. But he couldn’t do that: it felt presumptuous. He’d stretch his legs, have a look round the church until the second half – the kind of thing he encouraged his boys to do when they trooped up to St Peter’s, or went on school trips, learning history: not just from castles and bridges and battle sites, but from a Norman arch, or Gothic vaulting, from window and plaque and effigy.
‘Sir? Sir, is it time for our sandwiches yet?’
He walked across the north transept, where the loops of bell-pulls hung, ghostly in the fading light. What was there to see? In the north aisle, a couple of elaborate marble plaques. He went to have a look.
And of course: they were Heslop plaques. Heslops must have worshipped here for over two hundred years, clip-clopping down from the Hall in carriage or trap, taking their places in the family pew – probably the one where Thomas Heslop was sitting now, at the front; buried out in the churchyard when their time had come. He’d noticed a couple of tombs, and stone angels, when he’d hurried through.
Sacred to the memory of Sir Thomas Heslop, Bart . . .
He thought suddenly: There must be a plaque to Margot’s mother, and he walked on down the aisle, where one or two other people on their own were looking at things.
Here. An elegant little brass plate, set beneath a window ledge.
To the memory of Evelyn Margot Heslop, 1884-1916
Beloved wife of Thomas Geoffrey, and mother of Margot Evelyn
How strange: Margot’s father and his father shared a name. Geoffrey John Coulter, cabinet maker. Thomas Geoffrey Heslop, land owner. Descendant of the founder of a coal mine, and now a director. Such a huge social gulf. Yet son and daughter were getting to know one another.
Modern times.
He stood there, thinking, and another inscription came back to haunt him:
In loving memory of Margaret Coulter, née Ridley . . .
He must put spring flowers there on Easter Day. Primroses, picked in grassy Church Lane.
Oh, darling—
Should he feel guilty, now, that interest in someone else was beginning to quicken?
He walked slowly on. Light was fading behind the memorial
window, but now he could read the legend beneath that fallen soldier.
Sacred to the memory of Captain Edward Gibson, 1893-1916
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
He must have been killed at the Somme. Steven had a sudden flash of David Dunn, limping down corridors and into his class; twitching in meetings, weeping in the Christmas carol service. And he thought: I teach all this history, I reel off all these battles, and I know nothing, not really. Not as Dunn knows.
Footsteps came up towards him. Someone else was coming to look at this window, a tall, stiff, grey-haired woman in coat and hat. Someone he recognised, though he couldn’t think from where he knew that handsome face. She must have been beautiful once. Then—
‘Miss Renner?’
She gave a little frown.
‘Forgive me—’ Something in her solitary dignity compelled him. ‘Steven Coulter,’ he said diffidently. ‘You won’t remember me, but I teach at Kirkhoughton Boys. You were there for the concert at Christmas, I think – Frank Embleton introduced us at the reception afterwards.’
‘Oh, yes.’ She gave a smile which changed her features entirely. ‘A very good evening. And you teach—’
‘History. I’m in Frank’s department. He’s talked about you – so has Margot Heslop. You obviously meant a lot to them all.’
‘I was fortunate to teach them. A very nice group of children – I’m pleased that they’ve all done so well. It’s a pity Frank isn’t here tonight. It never feels quite right without him.’
A bell was ringing for the second half. She turned to look up at the window, and fell silent.
‘It’s very striking, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Do you know anything about it?’
