Trio

by Sue Gee

  Don’t leave me . . .

  He saw himself returning at the end of a winter afternoon, the snow piled high at the door and still falling as he scraped it away and flung himself inside, calling her, shouting for her, stumbling half-frozen up the stairs—

  You belong to me . . .

  Into the room came the sound of the piano, playing alone. Through a blur of tears, his hand to his mouth, Steven watched Margot’s oscillating fingers evoking something unutterably far away, saw George and Diana listening, waiting, until they lifted their bows once more; and as this enthralling music filled the room, evoking human experience at its frailest, most poignant and profound, the Trio played as if they had never heard Ghost before, and were discovering it for the first time.

  Gradually the movement built to a climax, and gradually faded. There was a final flourish, and then the piano fell silent, George and Diana plucked the strings, quietly, and yet more quietly still, and it was over.

  Of the last of Ghost’s three movements – hugely energetic and alive – Steven remembered only one thing: the way in which George moved as he played, so intense, so expressive, that the violin was almost a part of his body.

  The piece concluded. There was the profoundest silence.

  And then the applause filled the room, people getting to their feet until everyone was standing – an ovation for three brave, brilliant young people: that was what Steven heard all around him, as he blew his nose and joined in the endless clapping. Only Charles Embleton had stopped, and turned to his neighbour, talking of who knew what.

  ‘Bravo!’ Steven heard himself call out, something he had never done in his life, except on the cricket field. He was calling to all of them, as they bowed, and bowed again, but especially to Margot – yes, especially to her.

  ‘You’ve been crying,’ she said, as she stepped off the podium and into his embrace. ‘Oh, Steven . . .’

  ‘You were so good.’ He kissed her anxious face.

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts. Let’s go into supper.’

  He wasn’t going to tell her what had made him weep. Nor that for a moment, flooded with memory, he had thought: I can’t do this. Had thought he must write, and tell her.

  Forgive me . . . I have nothing to offer . . .

  Perhaps she guessed. She slipped her hand in his. And with the simplicity of that gesture, and as he closed his own hand round those slender, miraculously musical fingers, anguish and doubt fell away, became something as evanescent as the music which had so dissolved him. A catharsis – that was how he later understood it. Now, as they walked slowly out through the crowded room, their hands unlocking, intertwining, holding fast, he was filled with the sense of a new life finally beginning.

  That night, for the first time, they became lovers.

  They arrived at Hepplewick late, the headlamps sweeping down the darkened lanes, and into the drive. The Hall stood before them: huge, unlit, empty.

  For weeks Margot had had people staying. Diana, often – ‘Of course I’ll stay,’ though Margot had thought wildly that she might want to drive away, race away over the hills, and never return. Nanny, more often than anyone: ‘In you get, my duck, and I’ll bring you a nice cup of hot milk, that’s it.’ George once or twice, pacing about in the night and trying, in the morning, to pretend he had slept well, thank you.

  Miss Renner had not stayed. ‘I can’t leave my mother at night – but oh, my dear, my dear.’ For the first time ever, she had held Margot to her, stroking her hair.

  Barrow had cut the grass for the funeral; Mrs Barrow had come and gone each day, white-faced, saying little, sweeping into every corner, making hot meals, fresh beds.

  And Steven had stayed. That first night, there had been no question. While Diana slept with Margot – ‘I can’t be alone,’ – ‘Nor me,’ – he had taken the spare room, overlooking the back, an unloved part of the place. Bins, a washing line. Who cared? After that, after the first numb breakfast, he’d taken the dog out, and this became the most useful thing he could do, though every time he came back he could see Margot seeing her father, returning from those endless lonely walks.

  ‘Darling, come here.’ He held her as she wept.

  ‘Don’t go, don’t go.’

  He stayed, but he was rarely alone with her. There was the funeral. There was the concert approaching. That they might sleep together at any point in all this was unthinkable, wasn’t even spoken of. There were others in the house. It was too soon.

  But as supper at Great Whitton ended, and people began to leave:

  ‘Come home with me.’

  ‘Who else is staying?’

  ‘No one.’

  Now Margot switched off the headlamps. At once, they were swallowed in darkness, and he reached for her hand.

  ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ Up on the moor he was used to the blackness of the night, sometimes even craved it. He stroked her hand, and now they could make out the moonlit outline of the house.

  ‘Come on.’

  They got out, crunched over the gravel to the terrace. The moon, just on the turn, had risen to its full height and hung, steady and calm, over the silvery garden.

  ‘And look at the stars.’ He drew her to him, and they stood gazing up.

  ‘Do you know them?’ he asked her, and at once knew the answer.

  ‘A little. My father taught me.’ She bit her lip. ‘And Miss Renner showed us star maps.’

  ‘Show me the Plough. Very good. And Orion?’

  They turned, they craned their necks.

  ‘Where’s the Great Bear?’

  She pointed upwards. ‘He was my favourite.’

  ‘And mine.’

  A light wind stirred the branches of the cedar; she shivered.

  ‘Let’s go inside.’

  As soon as they opened the porch door the dog was up and before them, wagging, greeting, eager.

  ‘Hello, hello, we’re home now. Poor old boy.’

  He took their embraces, then pushed past them and out into the garden.

  ‘He’ll be back in a minute.’ Margot opened the door to the hall; they stepped inside. Sonorously, in the darkness, the clock began to chime.

  Since Heslop’s death, Steven had been the one to wind it: another useful task. They stood there listening: the three-quarter hour, waiting for completion.

  ‘Dah-dah-dah-dah,’ sang Margot softly, and began to cry. ‘Oh, Steven—’

  ‘I know, I know.’ He held her close as the last chime faded. The dark house stretched all around them, filled to every corner with enormous absence.

  At length she stopped, detached herself with a kiss, and by the moonlight at the open doors made her way across to the table by the fireplace, and switched on the lamp. The hall became human, filled with possibilities again, as the clock ticked steadily on. In came the dog, making for his basket, and Steven went to close the doors behind him, then draw across the immense old curtain.

  Margot watched him, and felt misery begin to fade. ‘Do you remember?’ she asked, as he walked back towards her, ‘being here after that autumn concert? Telling the dog how beautiful he was?’

  He nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘It made me notice you,’ she said. ‘I think that’s when I began to fall in love.’ She moved into his arms. ‘And do you remember our first kiss here?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Kiss me again.’

  He slipped his hand round her head, and lifted her face to his.

  The moon slipped down the sky, and filtered through the dense, stirring branches of the cedar. It pierced a gap in the bedroom curtains, and a thin line of silver fell brokenly on to the bed where they lay, where everything was a muddle and tangle: sheets, quilt, blankets.

  ‘I love you,’ said Steven, words he had spoken only to one othe
r woman, and thought never to say again. He said it again.

  She lay in his arms with her head on his chest: the timeless pose of lovers.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, and kissed his naked shoulder, loving it as much as any part of him.

  Outside, the wind was rising, the summer night growing colder. It hadn’t rained for weeks, but as they got up, and made the bed straight again, and climbed in again to smooth linen, they heard the first pattering on the glass.

  ‘Come here.’

  He drew her back into that eternal pose, and they lay there, listening. The rain began to fall faster, harder, as blowy and ceaseless as it had been on the autumn night they met, when she had had no thought of meeting anyone, and he could only think about the past.

  ‘My love.’

  ‘My darling.’

  His eyes closed first. She lay listening to his breathing grow steady and slow, gave his hand a squeeze, felt an answering squeeze. Would there always be that steadiness, that swift ­response? She felt her own eyes begin to close.

  They began to drift towards sleep, little snatches of things – the music, George’s voice, Diana’s lifting of the bow, the way the dog had run to greet them – blowing about on the cusp of different dreams, as the rain poured on and on.

  7

  The summer of 1938. On flags in every German and Austrian town and city, on town halls and balconies, the swastika hung above the streets, or fluttered in a sudden gust of wind. It blew above the open spaces of Berlin: over the Platz der Republik, from the roof of the Reichstag, and all along the Unter der Linden, where the lime trees stirred. It adorned banners twice the size of a man in medieval Nuremberg, where preparations for the 10th Party Congress had begun: the Rally of the Greater Germany. In every German and Austrian town and city, every Jew now carried a marked identity card.

  In Spain, the British battalion of the International Brigade had crossed the River Ebro. Anti fascista! Proletaria! The red flags swung as they marched. Now, with their American allies, in the scorching heat, they were fighting a last desperate battle for the town of Gandesa.

  In London, the government had ordered a thousand Spitfire fighters.

  And in Leeds, Australia had beaten England in the fourth test of the Ashes.

  You read about these things, or some of them, in The Times, or the Morning Post, or the Northumberland Journal. You listened to the news, if you had a wireless.

  Or you tried not to listen. You imagined, and that was worse.

  In the breakfast room of Great Whitton, Charles Embleton turned irritably to the cricket, and Priscilla looked out of the window and dreamed of seeing a fair-haired, sunburned figure suddenly come walking up the long beech avenue, swinging a kitbag. ‘Mother! I told you I’d be back.’ She put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She reached for the butter dish. Cold toast lay on the plate before her.

  It wasn’t only her son, her darling. Last night she had lain awake for hours, imagining, over and over again, those last moments in the pele tower at Hepplewick: the striding in, banging the door behind him; the taking down of the gun, the hesitation. Then—

  It came back to her now, on this beautiful morning, and she gave a little gasp.

  The Times was flung down across the table.

  ‘If that boy had thought for a moment of how he would make you suffer—’

  She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course it bloody matters. And where’s Diana?’

  ‘Gone over to Hepplewick. You know she has.’

  A grunt, a return to the paper.

  Enormous, unspoken things lay between them. Priscilla, her cold toast untouched, gazed out of the window once more, thinking now of her daughter, who had finally, in a storm of tears, confided.

  ‘I didn’t know – I never knew – he was like a father – a much nicer father than Daddy – I’m sorry, but it’s true – and to think of him thinking all those things all these years – I was so shocked . . .’

  No more shocked than I, thought Priscilla, rocking and stroking her, up in her pretty bedroom, with its view of the reed-fringed lake, the island.

  ‘But I didn’t want to hurt him like that – I never thought – I never, never thought he would—’

  ‘Shssh, darling, shssh. No one could ever have thought such a thing.’

  At last the weeping stopped.

  ‘Oh, Mummy.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  The breakfast-room clock struck nine. A figure was walking up the avenue, small and dumpy: Mrs Chapple, from the village, coming, as every day, to clean. Priscilla pushed back her chair, and made herself – made herself – turn her mind to buckets, polish, flowers for the hall.

  You thought about the news, of the increasing threat of something terrible about to happen; of things that might, even now, be happening. Or you shut it all away, not wanting to know, and turned, as you had done all your life, to music.

  ‘Can we try those last few bars again?’

  Every morning in the shadowy drawing room: it gave shape, purpose and meaning; it gave something alive. Schubert and Schumann; Chopin, Ravel. The divine Mendelssohn, offering the most tender consolation. How they needed that.

  No one was giving lessons. No one talked of a concert, just as no one talked of war. But this – this they could do.

  ‘Just once more. Yes! Much better.’

  While they played, Barrow worked in the garden, as usual; Mrs Barrow cleaned and made lunch. Everything was being kept going, though no one knew for how long. And Steven – Steven went walking with the dog.

  ‘Come on, old fellow.’

  Out past the cedar and down the drive, the strains of music following: Haydn, Mozart, that lovely Mendelssohn. He was beginning to know it all. Once they spent two mornings with Beethoven, the Archduke, a miraculous thing. But not the Ghost.

  ‘I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to play that again.’

  Out along the lanes. The trees were dark and full: high summer. Since the downpour of rain on the night that he and Margot became lovers, the freshness of verge and ditch was wonderful. The fields stretched away for ever: as he walked, looking out over corn and cattle, he felt his boyhood come up to meet him – all those summer holidays, out with the dog and a sandwich.

  But it wasn’t only his own past, walking alongside him beneath the trees. Heslop had walked here, over and over, with this dog or that, so often down the years that to retrace his paths felt almost like having his coat around his own shoulders.

  How would things have been between himself and Margot, had Heslop lived? They had lived together for so long, father and daughter: would he have found it difficult to lose her? Or had his secret, obsessive inner life been the only thing that really mattered?

  ‘Here, boy!’

  The dog came bounding out of a ditch. He had recovered, as dogs did.

  ‘Home.’

  He turned back, to walk towards the house. He was living there now, loving and sleeping with Margot each night in that single bed, turning as the other turned, murmuring sweet nothings as they fell asleep. Except for going to fetch clean clothes, he had hardly visited the cottage. Margot had never asked to go there: perhaps she didn’t want to. In these long quiet weeks before term began again, they could easily do it, but did he want to take her there? What a huge thing it would be.

  The Hall came into view, a place where he was still a visitor. He walked up the shady drive, hearing the last strains of something float bravely out of the open windows.

  You scoured the paper, searching for the only piece of news you cared about. There was no knowing where Frank was fighting, only the guess that it would be by the Ebro, a river crossed by pontoon bridges.

  Severe fighting has continued today on the Ebro front . . . Nationalist
planes have unceasingly bombed and machine-gunned the Republican positions around Gandesa . . .

  You read, at the breakfast table, and pushed away your toast.

  ‘George? Darling?’

  The battle rages north and south of Gandesa under a burning sun . . . Blood is mingling with the waters of the Ebro . . . tons of explosives have been dropped on the makeshift bridges . . .

  Up from the table, out to the hall. Each day the post brought, once again, nothing that mattered.

  George walked along the riverbank on the long hot afternoons. Beside him the Coquet babbled and sang, newly filled from that sudden storm. Little fish darted in and out of the shade of flat stones; moorhen tugged at this and that in the reeds. Everything was restlessly alive. Now and then he met a mother and children on the towpath, skimming stones or running a stick along from tree to tree; sometimes they hung over the bridge, and dropped twigs into the racing water, dashing to the other side to see which bobbed out first.

  ‘That’s mine!’

  Occasionally it was just one child, doing these things alone, and as he nodded and smiled, and bade them good afternoon, he saw himself as a boy, out with his mother, in years he hadn’t realised were lonely until he went to Hepplewick. An only child, and Margot another: she and Diana had become the sisters he hadn’t known he needed, and Frank – Frank had become everything. And now Margot had found Steven, another only child. In and out it all wove, like a fugue.

  George walked on, running phrases of music through his mind, as he had done all his life. Sometimes he struck the air before him, or sang out a line, and a mother with her children smiled uncertainly. He asked himself what would become of them all if there really was a war. There was a paragraph or two about Spain in The Times, there were columns about Czechoslovakia, and Hitler’s rages. He yelled on the wireless, and you shrank. George thought: I want no part of this.