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 of 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.

‘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.’

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.