by Sue Gee
And as the aching weeks went by, he began to ask himself how modern music might respond to modern times, which were beginning to feel so hideous.
At home, after tea – ‘Nice walk, darling? More cake?’ – he went up to his room and stood looking through scores, and books, and records. Almost everything they played in the Trio was at least a hundred years old. Almost every concert was given to people they knew, or to friends of the people they knew. They were living hundreds of miles from London, and he the only one of them to know what that meant. Chamber music in a drawing room, country house concerts. Nothing wrong with that, music should be made everywhere.
But in London—
He read, he sat listening to Schubert and Beethoven through the scratch and hiss. He wondered if the Trio might ever make a recording of their work. Might that be possible? Other names began to push their way towards him, through reviews and articles: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, William Walton. In London they would surely be listening to their newest works, blowing the past apart.
The weeks went by. The creeper at the window began, here and there, to turn from green to crimson. Soon it would be time to start lessons again: cycling from house to house with a pannier full of music; answering the doorbell here, letting in the pupils, with their violins and anxious faces.
‘How have you been getting on? Well done – that’s so much better.’
Nothing wrong with teaching: an honourable life. Passing music from generation to generation: what more should a musician want?
But he thought: I came back for a reason. Now that reason is gone.
Steven and Margot walked the long track up the moor, leaving her car at the foot, and the dog went bounding before them. Once more it had rained, a couple of days ago, and the cropped tough grass, even as summer began to end, had a bit of a gleam about it. The sheep were spread out everywhere.
‘Here, boy, here!’
‘I don’t think he’d hurt them,’ said Margot.
‘But still—’ As sheep began to scatter, Steven was conscious of the farmer, and his own trained sheep dog, and the laws of the countryside. ‘Here!’ He shouted again, and the dog came nosing back.
‘Good boy.’ Margot took him on the lead, and tugged him to her. She slipped her other hand in Steven’s, aware of the momentousness of this occasion: her own nerves, and surely his, too. ‘How far?’
‘We’re close.’ And then, as the rise grew steep, and they rounded the bend, ‘That’s it.’
She looked, saw a square plain cottage with a blue door, the windows shining in the sun. There was a shed. There was a thorn tree. She knew there would be a memory everywhere, and she said nothing, just walked on beside him, the dog straining on the lead.
‘Heel!’
As they drew nearer, getting thirsty now, she saw the little fenced-in plot of garden, grass overgrowing unweeded earth.
‘I haven’t had time—’ said Steven, following her gaze.
‘Of course you haven’t.’
They had reached flat ground, and for a moment they stopped, and he turned her gently round. ‘Look at that.’
Far away in the haze of heat she could see the distant town, the church tower. She tried to make out the Square, and the long stone buildings of the school. She turned round again, saw the great slope of the hillside to the farm below, looked up at the limitless sky.
‘I’ll show you inside,’ said Steven, and they walked slowly over the grass towards the door. As he turned the handle she felt suddenly afraid. Should she really be here, in this private place?
‘Stay,’ she told the dog, unhooking the lead, and he flopped down by the water butt. She followed Steven inside, lowering her head, as he did, then straightening up in the little room.
Two windows, one at the front, one at the side, both hung with print curtains, both thick with dust. A stone sink, like the one in the kitchen at home; plates in a rack. A range, with things on the mantelpiece. A table, two chairs, a dresser, a bookcase. The clock on the wall had stopped. A staircase led to the single room above. She looked away from that. Everything was good and plain and well made.
‘Did your father make all this?’
‘Some of it.’ He stood tall in the middle of the little room, his hair flopping down in the way it did, and he looked so vulnerable that she wanted to go over and kiss him. She held back, waiting. ‘Some I made myself,’ he said. ‘I made the door.’
Margot turned round, saw the winter coat hanging on the peg beside it, next to his. A pair of small shoes stood beneath, next to his walking boots.
‘Oh, Steven.’
He gave a flickering little frown.
‘I’m sorry. Is it – is it too much for you, being here?’
She shook her head. ‘Is it too much for you?’
‘I wanted you to come. I want you to see. I suppose it does feel a bit—’
He had wanted her to come, yet it felt almost as outlandish as the copy of Homage to Catalonia had done, with its fist smashing into the foreground, while buildings behind it crumbled to ruins. The book was still on the table: he saw her look away from him and see it there, with her letters, and the pile of textbooks.
Soon the term would begin again.
Outside the door the sheep were calling: not in the urgent way of lambing time, but enquiringly, as if something new were happening. Perhaps it was.
‘Listen.’
They listened, they went outside, and the dog got up at once. A little light aircraft was buzzing over the moor. Then came another. Private planes? A few rich chaps enjoying themselves on a summer day? Perhaps. But they were flying low, and it felt like an omen.
‘Steven? If there were to be a war, what would you do?’
‘I don’t know. I think teachers might be exempt. I think that’s how it is.’
It was growing cooler, a light wind blowing now over the huge empty space all round them.
He closed the cottage door behind him. ‘Let’s go and walk a bit. Come on, boy.’
The sheep bolted into the bracken, just as they had when he and Margaret went walking. He took Margot’s hand, and pointed things out to her: the river which raced far below on the other side of the hill, the plantation which had been there since the time of William IV. ‘And there’s a Roman fort,’ he said. ‘Quite a bit of it left. It’s too far to go there now.’
Clouds were beginning to gather. The little light aircraft had flown into the distance.
‘Shall we go home?’ Steven asked.
Margot turned towards him, reached out to straighten that flop of hair, and kiss him. Nothing here, nothing in the way in which he had lived his life, could be more different than Hepplewick.
‘Does it feel like home to you now?’
Behind them, the windows of the cottage, that haunted little place, were darkening in the drift of cloud. He glanced towards it, then back at her. If she had not loved him before, she loved him then, as his eyes filled with tears and he drew her towards him.
September, the first leaves in the Square just beginning to drop in the cooler air. In Nuremberg, the Rally of the Greater Germany had begun. The photographs in The Times and Morning Post showed crowds of unimaginable size. Armed troops awaited the order to march into Czechoslovakia.
‘Sir? Sir, if that happens, will we go to war?’
‘It’s possible. Let’s hope not. Get out your books.’
‘Sir? Is Mr Embleton coming back?’
‘I hope so. Now, then—’
‘Sir, are you Head of Department now?’
‘Until Mr Embleton comes back, yes.’
‘Have you heard from him, sir?’
‘Not yet. Turn to Chapter One.’
Chamberlain flew out to Bad Godesberg, on the Rhine. The younger boys sniggered.
‘There’s nothing funny about it.’ Straughan stood on t
he stage in his gown like a glowering old eagle. ‘Bow your heads. Let us pray.’
Suddenly: sandbags in the Square. Outside the Museum, and heaped up in two corners.
‘Any boy found playing about on those bags will be sent to my study and asked to account for himself.’ The cane ran through smoke-stained fingers.
Then: ‘Sir, we got a leaflet yesterday. Me Dad’s digging a shelter in the garden.’
‘So’s mine.’
Everyone had had a leaflet. Everyone was suddenly after corrugated iron.
And then the gas masks came. In every classroom, throughout the lunch hour, came the struggle to fit the things on, the coughing and heaving at the rubbery smell, the helpless laughter as the trunks were waved about; the trumpeting.
‘Look at you, Hindmarsh!’
‘Look at yourself, Potts. You look prehistoric.’
‘All right, boys, that’s enough.’
No one was laughing in the staffroom, as the news got worse. But at the end of September Straughan lifted his hand at Assembly and a hush fell over the hall.
‘Boys. You will have heard, I hope, that Mr Chamberlain has returned from Munich with tremendous news. An Agreement has been signed between this country and Germany which guarantees peace for our time.’ He paused, to let it sink in. Then he told them all that the great hymn ‘Now Thank We All Our God’ had just been sung in Westminster Abbey, that they would all sing it now, that he hoped it would be sung in every school in the country. He looked out over them all, an old eagle surveying his young. Then he glanced towards the piano. ‘Miss Aickman?’
She gave her little nod; with the usual clatter and scrape of chairs the boys all got to their feet, as she struck the first chord. And they were off: a mighty tune, and they gave it their all.
‘Now thank we all our God
With hearts and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom this world rejoices . . .’
October, and Steven left school late: a meeting with Easton, the temporary teacher Straughan had appointed to take Frank’s classes. Even now, boys glanced up and down the street when they came out of the gates, as they used to do: waiting for the toot on the horn, the sight of the shining red Imp.
‘Hop in!’
Would it ever be standing there again?
Steven turned left into the Square for the bus to Morpeth. And then he saw something which made him stop: a grey-haired couple making their way to the tea shop on the far side. The woman was tall and handsome; the man had a stick, and his gait was stiff, as always, but there was nothing stiff about the way they were talking to one another, walking slowly, arm in arm beneath the yellowing trees.
Book Two
1
Winter was closing in. Puffs of wood smoke rose from the houseboat chimneys along the canal, and quite a few curtains were drawn. Sunday: sleeping in. A young man in need of a shave was out on deck in a holey old jumper and scarf, a scruff of a little dog at his side. Geoffrey nodded to him as he walked along the towpath.
‘All right?’ asked the unshaven one.
All the young greeted you with that, whether they knew you or not; the first time he’d heard it he thought the boy in the hardware shop had actually wanted to know. After a while he realised it was a form of ‘Hi,’ or ‘Can I help you?’ or almost anything, really. If he said, ‘Yes, fine, thanks,’ which wasn’t true, they just looked blank.
There were one or two runners up ahead, their breath streaming out on the air; cyclists wove alongside. Mostly, it was just him and the ducks, trailing a V in the icy water.
Cold cloudy weather, but he couldn’t stay in the house.
Up ahead, gulls wheeled over the tower blocks, swooped down towards the park off the New North Road. Here, in the gardens running down the sloping embankment, pigeons sat motionless in bare trees. The gardens were beautifully kept: everything pruned and cut back for the winter, leaves swept up; here and there a bonfire smoking in a corner, well away from the house. He liked all that: stuff done properly, things in order. When you felt like death you needed that.
Though a bit of family muddle would be good.
He glanced up through one of the leafless gardens, saw lights behind French windows, people moving about. Sunday in Islington: coffee grinder whizzing away, organic bread in the toaster, unsalted butter. The Archers, or Radio 3. The papers, the dressing gowns. People coming for lunch, but plenty of time. Or the children coming for supper, hours yet, and a casserole ready to go in the oven at six.
There was that kind of Sunday, which had once been his, and there was Sunday Bloody Sunday, which was now, with the memory of Glenda Jackson shoving a cup of Nescaff under the hot tap, knocking it back with a shudder. Why had that moment so stuck in his mind?
The next house had a Christmas tree up, pale lights shining through the grey. Most people round here had the tree in the window at the front, so passersby in the street could see it: bit of a competition for height and general glory. The select few didn’t have a tree at all until Christmas week, though on the estates round Packington Street they went up in November, with Santa clambering up the balcony and Babycham reindeer prancing at the windows. The sight of this tree now was difficult: it made him feel better, and it made him feel worse.
‘Excuse me.’ A cyclist swished past on wheels as slender and light as a dancer, and Geoffrey stepped back, moved closer to the garden wall, with its good wooden gate in the middle. He had an eye for good things: gates, kitchen tables, antiques. You could spend a fortune in Camden Passage once, before most of the dealers gave way to boutiques and restaurants, and on one or two pieces he had done, when he’d started to make proper money: a round Georgian table to go in the drawing room window, a lovely old desk lamp with opaque fluted glass.
But the desk he had now had come from home, like the mahogany dining table, and the fender, one of three: everything divided up between him and Evie on a couple of long wet autumn days. She had the piano; he took the grandfather clock. She had the sub-Gainsborough painting of the couple in the misty landscape, he had the hunter. It all had to go: the rugs, the teaspoons.
‘Oh, Geoffrey.’
‘I know.’
That was in 1983, the parents gone, and no way they could do anything but let the Hall go too. The little mine at Morpeth, which had kept the place going for so long, had been part of nationalisation after the war. No income from there for decades, and how his father’s salary and his mother’s old investments had kept the place going it was hard to understand. They’d all lived frugally, that was all he knew. Now it was over. And now the children were settled at school, and his firm doing well. There was no question of coming back.
Still – it was even more painful than he’d imagined.
‘You are quite certain, Evie?’
There were tears in her eyes as she nodded. She and Mike had the farm, and the boys; she had her teaching. She’d stayed up here, while he went down to London – ‘Northumberland is in my blood, I could never live anywhere else,’ – but a long way from Hepplewick: a hill farm on the far side of the Cheviots, overlooking a tributary of the North Tyne. She wasn’t going to give it all up – Mike wouldn’t give it all up – to come back to the Hall.
‘Oh, Geoffrey,’ she said again, standing in the cold, half-empty drawing room, the rugs rolled up, boxes everywhere. The rain poured wildly on to the garden, and the windows shook. The huge great branches of the cedar darkened them, as always, and their childhood swing moved back and forth in the wind.
‘Careful, Geoffrey, careful! Not too high.’
‘But I want him to push me, Mummy! I like going really high.’
‘What’s going to happen to that?’ he said, flooded with memories as he had never been while the parents were still alive, the place filled with talk and music, the children racing about. They’d loved coming her
e.
Evie was walking over to the piano, her shoes echoing on the bare floorboards. ‘It’ll stay, won’t it? I think it helped sell the house – they’ve got children themselves.’
He didn’t like to think of them, the new owners. You could give yourself to a place as much as a person: he saw that, now he was about to lose it.
The sound of the piano began to weave in and out of the pattering rain, something thoughtful and slow which he couldn’t think he’d heard before, and he stood listening, looking out over the terrace and the endless stretch of lawn to the ha-ha and the fields beyond. The cattle were sheltering beneath the lane-side trees: another marker of his childhood, and his children’s childhood, up here with Becky in the long summer holidays, thinking it was great, all this space. Perhaps, if they came in their teens, the countryside would be just boring.
The gentle piano piece was changing: sprightly now, tuneful and innocent. He turned to watch Evie, who looked so like their mother, and their grandmother, that photograph now packed away with all the others. Three generations had played that piano, and thank God she wasn’t selling it.
‘Of course I wouldn’t sell it.’
Bygate Farm was high up a track, sometimes impassable in winter. It led from the village of Craikhaugh, off the A68, up to that great grey stone place which looked, like the sheep on the hillside, as if had been there for ever, and could weather anything. Exposed as it was, the light poured into the big draughty rooms at the front. He tried to imagine the grand in one of them, thought it would look rather fine. Evie could get rid of the old upright, and perhaps having a grand would get Will going properly – he was the musical one.
The piece came slowly to an end. Evie leaned back on the piano stool, and gave a sigh.
‘What was that?’
‘Elgar.’
‘Good God.’
‘I found it in a heap of old scores in the library. ‘
