3

He’d drive: he loved driving. Heater on, radio on, flask of coffee and a sandwich: your own little world. And somehow not as lonely as the empty house. Views and vistas. It would save Evie from coming all the way over to Newcastle to meet the train. And he liked the idea of ringing her doorbell, seeing her face light up.

‘It’s an awfully long way,’ said Nina.

‘You’re sure about it, Dad?’ asked Charlie.

‘We used to do it all the time when you were little.’

‘I know, but—’

Neither of them spelled it out: that he was getting on and perhaps not the driver he was; that they didn’t like the idea of him trying to do it all in one hop, as the winter nights drew in.

‘Thought I’d stay in a B&B,’ he said. ‘Break it up a bit. Thought I’d take a look at the Hall, after all this time.’

‘Is that a good idea?’

Charlie could be a bit of doom-merchant when he felt like it.

‘Hope you don’t talk to your patients like that. You should be cheering me on.’

‘Sorry, Dad. It’s just – well, you know.’

He knew. Going back wasn’t always a great idea. And he was vulnerable: no question about it. If he saw something he didn’t like, if it upset him – not much fun on your own. Even so, he couldn’t help a little thrill of excitement at the thought of seeing it all again. He said so.

‘I wouldn’t mind seeing it again myself,’ said Charlie, getting up from Sunday lunch to give Jo a hand with the dishwasher. ‘I loved it there.’

Well, that was good to hear.

 

He might stop in Gateshead and have a look at the Sage, somewhere he’d never been. It had made a big splash in the papers when it opened in 2004: swanky Norman Foster, concert halls housed in a great glassy animal, crouching in three dramatic humps beside the Tyne. Seemed silly, to go all that way and not take it in.

There again, he might not. He could press on to a B&B near Hepplewick, if he left early enough. Somewhere in Morpeth, perhaps: lovely place, the county town, with a castle, a court house, good churches, a medieval bridge – and not without family history. The deeds of the Hall had been lodged in a bank there, with the plans by Capability Brown – the solicitor had had to send for it all when they’d sold. And the mine which had kept the Heslops going for generations had been not so far away. He could have a look round, he could please himself.

He sat at his desk doing Christmas cards, the fire at his back. When he got to the Ps he came upon Liz Peake’s card, given to him after the drinks party and tucked rather absent-mindedly into his address book. That was quite forward of her, now he thought about it. He reached for a Raphael angel.

Spending Christmas with my sister in the frozen north. Perhaps we might meet up when I get back.

Was that a good idea? Well, he’d done it now, wasn’t going to waste a Raphael. And she did have a very sweet smile. He signed it and sealed it, moved past the empty page of Qs. Now then, R. Andrew and Rose Ridley, up in Edinburgh, long ago crossed out. Andrew had gone first, not so long after his father; Rose had hung on, as widows do. As he was doing now. He ran his finger down the page.

Robson, John, old friend from Law School. Hadn’t seen him for years, but they always sent Christmas cards. He took a snowy Monet off the pile and wrote the annual message.

Hope all is well with you and Philippa and to see you in the New Year. They’d been saying that since about 1990. But now, as with so many of them, he had to add: Very sad to say that I lost my darling Becky in the summer . . .

He stopped, took another sip of his drink. Exhausting, to have to keep saying it, and to people who meant little to him now, except that they had always been there, and at Christmas that somehow did mean something. He looked at the piles of cards, done and yet to be done. The desk was capacious, had room for lots of stuff on the worn old leather top: the computer, the fluted lamp, the telephone. In here he still had the old-­fashioned kind with a receiver, probably fetch a bit in a vintage shop. Classic black: he liked that. Then there was the letter rack, the paperknife from Nina, the little Indian box from her boys where he kept his stamps.

‘Just what I needed: thank you!’

At one time, of course, the desk had been in the library at the Hall, heaped up with ledgers, employment records, records of coal production, minutes of meetings, everything relating to the mine outside Morpeth over which his grandfather had presided until his death before the war. It had gone on being useful in wartime, was nationalised in ’47, had finally bitten the dust – as it were – in 1985. That had been under Thatcher. He still had a mug in the kitchen somewhere, bought in support of the miners’ strike.

And all those documents: his mother had boxed them up, put them up in the attic. It was only when he and Evie were packing for the sale that they’d found them, dusted them off and gone through a few, looking at copperplate managers’ hands, and the hand of his grandfather, distinctive and firm, initialling accounts, and minutes, signing endless letters.

Thomas Heslop, Director, 1913 . . . Thomas Heslop, Director, 1925 . . . Thomas Heslop, Director, 1936 . . .

The last was dated July 1938: he had died, very suddenly, two weeks later.

 

‘Where’s grandpa’s grave?’

That was Evie, walking through the churchyard after the Sunday service one summer morning. In boring sermons they’d grown so used to gazing up at all the Heslop plaques.

Evelyn Heslop, 1884-1916

That was their grandmother, whose photograph they knew from the drawing room at home, who’d played the piano to their mother when she was a little girl. She still sang a favourite song to them sometimes, at bedtime.

‘The day is coming to a close, the night is drawing nigh . . .’

‘She was my namesake,’ said Evie, with a touch of pride.

And his own middle name was Thomas, after his grand-father – a name which had far less of a period feel than Geoffrey. At university he’d sometimes thought of calling himself Tom.

But out at last in the fresh air again, looking up at the great old family tombs, one with two stone angels silhouetted against the sky:

‘Where’s grandpa’s grave?’

A silence. Then: ‘He was buried outside the churchyard.’

‘Why?’

Silence. You remembered silences more than words, when you were little, just because they were unusual. The day his father had come home from school in the war, and shut himself into the library. This summer day, cow parsley lacing the shady borders of the churchyard, butterflies dancing over the lichened gravestones. At last:

‘It was what he wanted.’

‘Why?’

Birds sang away in the yew, car doors slammed in the lane.

‘That’s enough now, Evie. I’ll tell you when you’re grown up.’

‘That’s ages away.’

When they were finally told, about the accident in the pele tower, a gun going off without warning, he couldn’t really ­understand why that had been held back for so long.

Behind him, the fire was dying down. He got up, put on more smokeless coal,

‘What are we going to do with all this?’ Evie had asked, blowing the dust off another ledger, with its marbled endpapers and fading ink.

He shook his head. ‘Must be a company archive somewhere.’

Still hadn’t found the time to find it, and the boxes were still up in his own loft. He’d hardly given them a thought for years: poor show, Coulter.

Time for another drink. Try and finish the cards before supper. On and on they went.

 

Out and about, doing Christmas shopping, trees for sale on every corner and fairy lights in the windows, he had good days and bad days. The good ones were when he found just the right thing: in a good children’s shop on Upper Street a beautiful doll for Robyn, with three sets of clothes: pyjamas, slippers and dressing gown; jeans and T-shirt; a party frock.

‘Nothing pink,’ Jo had instructed him. ‘Nothing plastic. We don’t do Barbie crap.’ Jo could be formidable, but she was right, of course. He hated five year-olds done up to look like teenage tarts. Robyn, born when Jo was thirty-nine, was seven now, still into dolls. Just. And football, apparently, but he didn’t feel like getting her football gear.

The party frock was a very pale pink, and so pretty: he bought the doll and the outfits, crossing his fingers, and went to have lunch in the Camden Head. A tree in the corner, piping hot shepherd’s pie and a pint, the remains of the Sunday paper.

Becky had been a brilliant shopper: though they both loved choosing books, in truth he’d left a lot of Christmas and birthdays to her. Now, with a hot lunch inside him, walking along Camden Passage afterwards with the nice posh tote bag, he felt quite proud of himself.

Waterstone’s on the Green was a different matter. He’d thought books for the boys, but Nina said they just didn’t read.

‘They must read something.’

‘Not much. We do try, but once bedtime story went out of the window—’

It was all computer games, video games, Playstation. X-box.

‘What’s X-box?’

He didn’t really understand the answer, didn’t really care. He knew he sounded curmudgeonly and old. On days like this, gazing round neon-lit acres of shouty kids books, he felt it.

‘To be honest, Dad, you’d be better doing it all on-line.’

He gave in. ‘Give me a list.’

At home, he gazed at games on Amazon. What would Becky have thought of all this? She’d probably have been kinder, more lenient. Played with them, even – he could remember her on the sofa last Christmas, Ben and Ollie on either side, showing her stuff on the screen. Their fingers flew. Both now needed glasses.

‘Just do it,’ he told himself, and did it, ordering two games of Minecraft, which Nina had said they liked best. Then, in need of something he actually knew about, he went to the books pages.

Naomi Klein: that would do Jo. Raymond Tallis for Charlie, who could be a doom-merchant – like Jo, in a different way – but was still a bloody good doctor. He thought about things, and Tallis was a bloody good thinker. He’d do Nina and David tomorrow; tomorrow he’d think about wine. And wrapping. Something else Becky had been so good at.

And Evie, he thought, getting up from the desk and going to the drinks cupboard. Must get her something special.

What he really wanted, of course, was to buy everyone music. Well, there was still time. He turned on the news, poured a whisky.

 

And now his own Christmas cards were pouring on to the mat: he didn’t think he’d ever seen so many. Of course, it was the first on his own – everyone was being extra kind.

Thinking of you so much . . . Extra special wishes, dear Geoffrey . . . We must meet up in the New Year . . . Thinking of you so much . . .

He put them all up round the drawing room, slipping the Happy Christmas side into books, with the pictures of robins, sheep in snowy fields, Nativities and peaceful doves sticking out: another trick of Becky’s, so they didn’t all blow over every time someone opened a door, and you could get lots more up for your money. As it were. He stood back and looked at them: lovely. All he wanted now was for Becky to come in and say: ‘Beautiful, darling. Now when are we getting the tree?’

Standing there in the middle of the room he blew his nose hard. Sobbing in an empty house: he’d done enough of that. No holly, no tree in the hall, no Becky: that’s just how it was.

And though there were invitations in several of the cards – Christmas drinks. Mulled wine & mince pies. Just having a few people round – it was the thought of going home which was keeping him going now. Yes, he’d go and raise a glass; yes, he’d take all the presents over to Nina and David’s, where everyone was gathering for a pre-Christmas lunch on the 20th. The Wine Society case had arrived: that was always cheering. He’d go on to auto-pilot, tuck Becky into the darkest, closest and most secret pocket in his heart, do his best to enjoy it all. And if he was hurting his children and grandchildren by choosing not to be with them – Gosh, Dad, it’s our first Christmas without Mum, too, are you really sure? then he was sorry. He’d make up for it next year, have everyone here, give them all a good time, like the old days. He blew his nose again.

But what he wanted now was to go back to his roots: to visit his parents’ double grave in the little churchyard at Hepplewick, to stand at the gates of the Hall and remember everything he’d loved: racing with Evie down to the ha-ha; walking hand in hand with his mother through the kitchen garden, choosing things for supper. God, that garden had served them well, when the family must have had hardly three farthings to rub together. Swinging high beneath the cedar, smelling that resinous scent in summer; sitting with his father in the library, watching him reading, and marking, looking up with that heart-stopping smile. Hearing music, and music, and music, pouring out of the windows in summer, filling the whole house in winter, sinking into his soul.

He had to go back. And then he’d drive over to Evie, who’d fitted the grand into that little house in Otterburn, overlooking the garden whose birds she fed all through the winter, as he did in London, as Becky had always done. He’d listen to Evie play.

Lunchtime. From the kitchen he could hear the calm tones of Penny Gore, announcing a concert from St John’s Smith Square. In one of those moments which really could only come in a novel, where the thoughts of the character are suddenly echoed in life, he heard that a piano trio was about to play. And as the tuning up began, as he walked through, thinking of his mother, so utterly, magically intent at the piano, of Diana Embleton sweeping her bow with such force across the cello, of George Liddell lost in rapture, he realised, hearing the first notes, that what was being performed now was something he had never heard them play, but which his father had once told him and Evie had been the greatest performance they had ever given, after their grandfather’s death: Beethoven’s Ghost.

He knew it, he knew it from listening to recordings many times, he loved it, and Becky had loved it too. How could you not? And standing in the kitchen now, winter sun at the window, blue tits swinging away on the coconut outside, he heard that sublime second movement begin, and then he did weep with longing.