6

Morpeth was behind him, and now, as he drove along the old roads he’d once known so well, he felt a rising happiness. The morning was still fine, the sun striking bare tree trunks in a way which even in childhood had lifted his heart: that greeny-grey, that winter stillness – the fields stretched away in the sun. But the hills to his left were speckled with white on the tops. In the north, you could have two kinds of weather within a few miles.

Composer of the Week: still Haydn. A quartet danced with him as he drove. He slowed to drive over a bridge across the river, passed a farm. A dog on a chain began to leap and bark wildly at the sound of the car. ‘Quiet!’ The farmer crossing the yard gave a shout, then raised his hand, and Geoffrey raised his own in greeting, glimpsing a young woman washing dishes at the kitchen window. And from thinking so much about George, who had been Evie’s godfather, and written to her until his death, he found his mind turning now to Diana Embleton, who had spent the war as a Land Girl.

‘Imagine it! Me! Driving a tractor, digging up swedes. Milking! Gosh, I did love milking. Some of those cows were so sweet.’

If Evie had loved George, he had adored Diana. How could you not? So gorgeous to look at – in his teens he’d woken from dreams about her which had made him flush with mingled happiness and embarrassment. She was forty-five! How could he think of her in that way?

He could. Lots of men could. She was beautiful, funny and kind. As she grew older, the pale mass of her hair began to grey, yet it was still something you wanted to touch, to stroke, to unpin. Her skin had never lost its English rose pink and cream; her clothes were always the kind of clothes which made you think about the underwear beneath, imagining satin, silk and lace. She had such spirit, she was such fun. But there was more than that, a dreaminess, a thoughtfulness. Now and then you’d look up from a game of croquet in the garden, or draughts by the fire, and see she was miles away. And when she played—

‘Of course,’ she told him once, when they were out for a walk, ‘I’ve always been the weakest of the three. George lets me know that, though he never actually says. But if anyone has to do everything three times, or keeps missing an entry, or just fluffs things – you can count on me.’

‘I think you play fantastically.’

‘Darling.’ She put her hand on his arm and he felt a tingle run through him from head to foot. She had called him darling. Could he – might he – might it ever be possible . . . ‘You’re so sweet,’ she said, as they came to a stile. ‘Help me up, would you? I’m getting so creaky now.’

He knew that without him she would almost have vaulted it, she was so graceful and strong. And all those years in the war as a Land Girl: that must have made her really fit. But he put a hand under her arm, in its soft tweed jacket, and helped her up, and over. She dropped down onto the grass.

‘Diana?’ He followed her over the weathered planking.

‘Yes, darling.’

The wind was blowing strands of hair across her face; he reached out and brushed one away. Her dreamy grey eyes regarded him.

‘You’re so like your father.’ And then, as he opened his mouth to speak, to make, at last, his declaration: ‘Don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m old enough to be your mother.’ She laughed. ‘I almost am your mother, if that’s what godmothers are. Come on.’

And she was striding away, over the grass still glossy from yesterday’s rain. He followed helplessly.

She was beautiful, she was unattainable – by him, or by anyone else, it seemed. It was Evie, always the one to ask questions, and go on asking them, who had said to their mother one evening at supper;

‘Mummy? Why isn’t Diana married?’

‘I don’t know. Who wants a second helping?’

‘Me,’ said their father, at the other end of the table, and then it was all pass your plate, and is that enough, and who wants another potato.

‘She’s so lovely,’ said Evie, and he looked at his plate, feeling no one but he had the right to say that. ‘I’d have thought lots of men would want to marry her.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Don’t you think so, Geoff?’

‘S’pose so.’

Evie groaned. ‘Honestly. Boys.’ She turned back to their mother. ‘Lots of men,’ she said again.

‘Oh, Evie. Perhaps lots of men did want to marry her. Perhaps she just didn’t want to marry them.’

‘But why? I mean, there must have been someone.’

He saw a glance run between his parents down the table.

To this day he didn’t know its meaning, and to this day he had not thought of it for years. Decades. When you were as old as he was, everything was decades ago.

‘I just don’t know,’ said their mother at last. ‘But I do know you haven’t done your practice yet. Straight after supper, yes?’

‘Oh, Mummy.’

The evening sunlight slanted through the window. Here in the kitchen, here at the back of the house, it was always full of shadows.

‘Diana,’ Geoffrey said now, slowing as Hepplewick village came into view. Apart from Becky’s, it was the first time he’d said a woman’s name aloud for years. And he thought of another conversation with her, much later, when he was married, and everything was easier between them. There’d been a rehearsal, soon there would be supper. Becky and his mother were clattering about.

‘Music is everything to me.’ She was sitting in the drawing room, a glass in her hand. Outside, a blackbird was singing away on the rooftop – there was always a blackbird at the Hall. ‘I might not have been as good as I wanted, or everyone else wanted, but – it saved me. Without it, I’d have been just a silly girl.’ She looked out at the garden, and again he saw that faraway look fill her eyes. It was a look which could drive a man mad.

‘We all need something to give our lives meaning, don’t we?’ she said slowly. ‘I mean, I know that’s a cliché, but – music is mine. Just as it is for your mother. And the wretched George.’

‘Did someone mention my name?’ He was crossing the hall, as the clock began to chime. In he came, lifting his hand in a sweep. ‘I see everyone has a drink except me.’

 

There was the village green, with its handful of houses. A few new ones, stretching out quite a way behind them. A Christmas tree stood in every window, some flashing lights, though it was barely mid-morning. There was the church. Geoffrey pulled up, got out on to the verge. It was cold, he was stiff. He shook himself, pulled on his gloves.

Then he walked up and opened the lych gate, remembering that lovely click, though surely there must be a new latch now. He closed it behind him, looked round, trying to remember. It was over thirty years.

One or two of the graves had fresh flowers out of season; some of the headstones were that black shiny granite he didn’t like, though you saw it everywhere.

And there were the two Heslop tombs, there were the angels. Evie had loved them, Nina and Charlie had loved them: that billowing hair, those gowns, those upraised hands. One was stern, one had a gentle smile. All nonsense, of course. And yet – he had loved them too.

He walked along the path towards the west end of the church, feeling more confident now. Yes. There it was. His feet sounded loud on the flag-stoned path.

In loving memory . . .

His father had gone first, so suddenly, so shockingly – but then, how hard he’d worked.

Steven Geoffrey Coulter, 1910-1979

His mother, weeping unstoppably, had clung to the Hall.

‘Don’t make me leave it, I couldn’t bear to leave it.’

A cleaner came, one of the Barrow girls: Grace, the first to marry. A gardener, Nellie’s husband. There weren’t many families who’d stayed together as these two had: Heslop – Coulter, as his mother became – and Barrow; he and Evie knew they were lucky, not to have to worry too much. But then, as with Becky; as with their long-ago, long-dead grandmother; cancer came to call.

And of his beloved wife, Margot, née Heslop

1912-1982

Weeds were growing round the base of the headstone, and he bent to tug them out, straightening up with difficulty. Then he just stood there, thinking.

‘I’m here,’ he said to his parents, and felt he need say no more.

Up on the church tower a jackdaw was making its sharp metallic sound – you couldn’t really call it a cry. Chip. Chip-chip, into the raw morning air. The country in winter: filled with emotion as he was, he was very glad he’d come. And he walked back through the churchyard, dropping the weeds in a metal basket, and wondering whether to look in the church. Yes, just for a minute or two. The Trio had often played here.

He walked up to the south door, turned the handle, pushed at the old oak door. But it didn’t give. It was locked – you couldn’t even get into the porch.

Had it ever been locked in his childhood? He couldn’t ­remember. But just as well, perhaps: he still had a lot to do. He walked back to the car, got in, and drove away. No music now: he didn’t want it, didn’t want anything except this rising tide of anticipation, rounding the bend in the lane, slowing down to prolong the moment.

He was almost there. And now he was driving really slowly, his heart beginning to thump in his chest as the lane straightened out and he saw the line of trees.

They’d been thinned, they’d been thinned quite a lot. He looked through them and frowned. He’d misjudged the distance – he wasn’t as close as he’d thought. And he drove on, passing a lot of new build, a housing estate, and rounded the next bend. This was it.

No it wasn’t.

For a moment he felt himself quite lose his moorings. He was older than he thought, he was more forgetful. Somehow he’d made a mistake. And he pulled into the verge, and switched off the engine.

‘Get a grip, Coulter,’ he said aloud, and got out of the car once again. Perhaps he should walk, perhaps that was better. The fields to the left stretched away, just as he remembered. But there was nothing to see on the right except more fields, ones he remembered walking through on Sundays with the family, remembered that quite clearly. So where was the Hall?

He turned back, walked past the car to the bend, and on to the next. Here were those new-build houses again: where had they come from?

Then he knew.

He stood in the lane and beheld not the tall iron gates, not the drive or the terrace, not the towering cedar, nor the grey stone house overlooking that limitless lawn, with its rose beds and summerhouse. Not the ha-ha, nor the tennis court, nor the stable yard. It was gone, all of it. He was looking at houses you could see anywhere in the country: bright red brick, the dark brown window frames and little porches which every builder in the land used now; tarmac paths and cars where there should have been front gardens. Instead, just a strip of grass, running from house to house. And a Christmas tree in every window. From somewhere he could hear cartoon voices, laughing away in the quiet.

He could not move. He could not move a muscle. How could he have been so foolish, so unthinking, all this time? Developers were everywhere, the price of land was soaring, people needed somewhere to live. In a great spacious county like Northumberland there was every opportunity to give it to them, and make a fantastic profit.

When had it happened? How soon after they’d sold it had it happened?

‘Oh, Jesus.’ He covered his eyes.

 

Back in the car, finally back there, though it felt like an hour before he made it, he reached for the Thermos. Something else he hadn’t thought of – to ask the landlady at the B&B to refill it. He slowly unscrewed the cup, then the lid, drank a cold mouthful and almost spat. But he had to have something, or die. That was what it felt like.

Caffeine stirred in his veins. It was better than nothing. At last he stopped trembling. Then he started the car. He’d drive to Kirkhoughton, which surely could not have been razed to the ground. He’d look at the school, have a good hot lunch. And then he’d be over to Evie’s, fall into her arms.

 

Cars were parked all round the Square, and all of them on meters. Of course they were. He drove round, finding almost the last space, not far from the Museum, and felt in the little compartment for coins. Another thing he hadn’t considered, but he wouldn’t be staying long, and he found a couple of pounds and some fifty pences. He got out, fed the meter, and looked about him.

His millionth Christmas tree stood outside the Museum. Posters of Roman antiquities were pinned in a glass box at the entrance. At the top of the Square stood another, a mighty thing, a terrific tree, as tall as the one at the Sage, if not taller. He knew where it had come from, as it had come every year since for ever: from Harwood Forest, up in the hills, brought down by lorry. Even as he thought this, he wondered if it were true. The world he once knew had moved beneath his feet – that was how it still felt, and even the lights on the tree were not as they used to be, but that planet-saving cold bluish-white, as they had been at the Sage. Never mind, never mind. There were some things you had to get used to.

All along the street, beneath the bare trees, people were doing their Christmas shopping, children racing about on scooters, every second person on a phone. He passed a gift shop, full of stencilled cushions, distressed chairs, blankets tied up with ribbon. Enamel jugs of holly stood on distressed chests, before rag-rolled walls hung with prints. In truth, the whole thing could have come straight out of Camden Passage. He supposed that retro was where it was at now, wherever you were. A computer shop stood next door, stuffed with smart phones and iPads: straight out of Tottenham Court Road. It was packed. He walked on, past a butcher hung with game – well, that was something he did remember.

What had he expected? That the town would be frozen in time, as he had imagined the Hall? He stopped on the pavement, gazed out at the great ring of hills beyond the town. Snow on the tops, and it was colder here, much colder then Morpeth. He stamped his feet, wondered if Evie could lend him extra socks.

Now then: the school. Might that have gone, too, that shabby old Victorian thing? He looked across the Square, searching for the line of railings, along which many a boy had run many a stick. They were there, but smartened up no end. And beyond them, across the playground, he saw that the old façade had been re-faced: shiny grey oblongs hung over the brick, and a great glass extension jutted out into the playground. A science lab? Probably. He went slowly over the road.

The gates in the railings were padlocked for the holidays. He looked up at the sign which stood next to them.

Kirkhoughton School

Head Teacher Barbara Mason, BA (Hons), Cert. Ed.

Of course: it was a comprehensive now. It was mixed. Even as he realised this, a couple of girls came down the street towards him, scrolling away on their screens. They were out of uniform, but he knew straight away that this was their school.

Well: that was all right, wasn’t it? It looked like a damn good modern school, as good as anything you might find in London and possibly better. Why should he feel such a stab of sadness, that what he had remembered was, like the Hall, now utterly erased? Again he asked himself: what did you expect?

‘Excuse me—’

The girls stopped, looked up from their screens. They were young, they were cool, they were of their time. It just wasn’t his time, that was all.

‘All right?’ asked one of them.

He wasn’t all right, he was still shocked to the core.

‘Are you at school here?’ he asked them, and they nodded. ‘My father,’ he said slowly, ‘My father was Headmaster here. Head Teacher.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ He could see the girl trying to be polite, to take an interest. ‘That must have been a long time ago,’ she said, and then, ‘Sorry, that sounds a bit rude.’

‘Not at all. You’re quite right,’ he said, and then, ‘Everything was a long time ago.’

He sounded an idiot, even to himself. A very foolish, fond old man. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit shaken up.’ He got some kind of a grip, and smiled. ‘Take no notice,’ he told them. ‘I’m fine, really.’

‘No probs,’ said the friend.

‘Happy Christmas,’ he said, turning back to look through the railings.

‘Merry Christmas.’

They were back on their screens, arm in arm.

For a little while he stood looking across at this shiny new building. If he shut his eyes he could half-see the old one, with boys pouring into it, boys pouring out of it, off down the hill to football and cricket, his father as a young teacher bringing up the rear.

‘Sir? Sir, when are we playing Hexham?’

He’d struggled to concentrate, his mind on other things. Was that how it had been?

‘I never thought I’d be Head,’ he said once. ‘There were people much better than me, all lining up for when Straughan retired.’

‘You made a brilliant Head,’ said their mother.

Had Geoffrey disappointed him, choosing the Law? Would he not have wanted him to follow in his footsteps, not those of another man?

He was getting cold again. Just one more thing to revisit, before he had lunch. And he walked up the hill, passing the bus stop at which, he knew, his father must have stood a thousand times, waiting to go back to that moorland cottage.

He walked on, came to the war memorial, right at the top of the Square. Even now, though it was almost Christmas, a couple of scarlet wreaths stood on the plinth. Someone had tucked a sprig of holly beneath the one on the left. He walked slowly round the grey stone obelisk, with the words engraved as they were on almost every such memorial.

To the memory of the men of Kirkhoughton

who gave their lives for their country.

He searched for the names he knew. On one of the three sides dedicated to the First World War he found the one he was looking for.

Capt. Edward Gibson. Fusiliers. The Somme. 1916

There was a window dedicated to this young man in St Mary’s at Hepplewick, rather a lovely thing: had the church not been locked this morning he would have looked at it again for the first time in thirty years. Now, he stood gazing at the lettered name, remembering Mrs Dunn, Miss Renner as she had been once, visiting the Hall with her husband, who had survived this very battle.

‘Miss Renner meant everything to us when we were little. I’m so glad she’s happy now.’

He remembered being a little afraid of her husband, who walked so stiffly, and had that rather strange laugh.

‘You should have seen him before he was married,’ his father had said drily. ‘He’s a new man now.’

And now he, like Emily Renner – Emily Dunn – was gone, as everyone was gone. Geoffrey walked round to the fourth side, looked for the two names he had first seen when he was a boy, and learning about the war in which he, and then Evie, had been born.

Capt. F. C. Embleton. Int. Brigade. Ebro, Spain, 1938

Frank Embleton: at last he thought of him.

‘He made us a quartet. When he was killed—’

His mother had been unable to finish the sentence.

‘My brother. My darling brother. Oh, how I wish you had known him!’

‘The best teacher the school ever had. He was the one who should have been Head.’

‘Everyone loved Frank.’ George spoke so lightly, when he said this, but you knew, though nobody ever said so, that he was the one who had loved him most. Adored him.

Had he really been as wonderful as everyone said he was?

‘Every generation has people like that, and he was ours. In our group of people, he was ours.’

He looked on down the list of names.

Pt. D. Hindmarsh. Fusiliers, 2nd Batt. Dunkirk, 1944

His father’s favourite pupil. You shouldn’t have favourites, but he had.

He’d lost a boy once to TB, it was everywhere, then. It had upset him terribly, his mother had told them once. But when the news came of Donald Hindmarsh – that was the day he could just remember: the library door shut tight, and he and Evie told to shush, and not to dare to knock.

‘He wasn’t very clever, he wasn’t great at sport. He couldn’t do anything, really, but he made us all laugh, and that counted. But that’s not why I liked him so much. He was just a good lad, that was all.’

In front of the memorial, Geoffrey bowed his head. After this horrible morning, it gave him such relief.

 

He had lunch in a pub in the Shambles, the oldest part of town, and less crowded with shoppers, though there was a little bookshop he liked the look of. In the snug they were playing darts, as his father had said they did in his day, when he and Frank Embleton had a drink here now and then. At least that had survived.

Amazing, what good a piping hot meal could do you. He sat by a proper fire with a pint and vast plate of steak-and-kidney pie. A tree flashed away by the bar, and carols were playing on a loop.

Oh, come, all ye faithful . . . .

He would not get any more sentimental. He would not. He blew his nose and made further inroads on the pie. Then he sat back for a bit, resting before he resumed the journey, listening to the carols and the thud of the darts.

‘Wha-hay!’

Apart from the flashing lights and the recorded singing – not quite King’s College, Cambridge, but never mind – he thought that perhaps little had changed here in all these years. A pub was a pub, after all. In the old days the bar would have been thick with smoke, of course, as his father had said the staffroom always was. ‘You could hardly see across the room, sometimes.’ Well – that was one thing that had changed for the better. He shut his eyes, let the carols drift over him, felt himself falling asleep.

‘All right?’

He woke with a start, as the barmaid cleared the table.

‘Fine, thanks. Very good pie.’

‘That’s good.’

He looked at his watch: he must get going. He dug out his phone, texted Evie.

Should be there for tea. And then: Oh Evie. Lots to tell, alas. G.

He texted Nina. In a pub in Kirkhoughton. More tonight. Dad. xx

To his surprise, he sent a text to Jo. Wanted to visit Emily Davison’s grave in Morpeth. No time. Hope all well. G.

Emily Davison, one of Jo’s heroines. If you could still call them that. She was a woman after all. Was she a hero now? A brave mad woman, anyway. ‘Deeds, not words’ was inscribed on her gravestone. He thought about that, as he got up to pay, and then he went out into the Shambles and took a quick look at the paperbacks in boxes outside the second-hand shop. One of the boxes was full of old orange Penguins: he riffled through them. Good Lord. Orwell. Down and Out in Paris and London. Keep the Aspidistra Flying. 1984. He pulled out a dog-eared copy of Homage to Catalonia, 75 pence pencilled on to the flyleaf. Well, well, well.

And as he went inside to pay, remembering everything his father had told him about this book, he remembered his first reading of it, when he was fifteen, and falling in love with Diana. He still had that edition at home – the first one, the one Frank Embleton had sent to his father, urging him to read it. Already, he had been on his way to Spain.

He still remembered that cover, that fist smashing into the foreground. Now, the edition he paid for seemed anodyne: a watercolour of soldiers at the window of a train. They were holding up their fists, but they were smiling, might almost have been going on holiday. But he had to have it: it was too much of a coincidence, to find it here, on this momentous day. He leafed through the pages.

I have no particular love for the idealised ‘worker’ as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.

‘Deeds, not words.’

Orwell was one of those rare people for whom both were important. Like Frank Embleton, perhaps.

Geoffrey walked back through the Shambles, and into the Square. A bus rumbled out of it, down the hill, and once more he thought of his father, and those endless journeys, to and from school. He crossed over, just in time to see a traffic warden stick a ticket on his windscreen. God, how had he managed to obliterate all thought of the bloody meter? Very easily, came the answer, and then he made two decisions.

The first was that he wasn’t going to argue, and make a scene. He was too tired: to hell with it. The second, reached as the warden walked away, was that on the way to Evie’s he would try to find Hencote Moor. Was the cottage was still there? The Hall might have been bulldozed and utterly destroyed; up on the moor there might still be something that once had mattered.

He tore off the ticket, got in, got out the map.

 

Even a few miles out of town he saw that the weather was changing, the sky beginning to darken. Was he mad, to do this? He drove slowly, for a good half hour, Afternoon on Three interrupted now and then by a blast of local traffic news. He banged on the knob, got Penny Gore back again, listened to some Hungarian thing she liked.

The road climbed, climbed further; he scanned it for signs. The Cheviots went on for ever, and how did he really think he was going to find one little bit of them, just because he wanted to? One thing made it easier: the fact that it was winter. Passing the leafless trees, and verges stripped of summer grass and weeds, he could make out a sign or two: Public Footpath. To Hadrian’s Wall. Wark Fell. Probably none of these had been there in his father’s day. Now, Tourist Information wanted to tell you everything, and he was glad of it.

Public Footpath. Hencote Moor. He almost missed it, couldn’t believe it, braked suddenly and was hooted at by a car behind he hadn’t even noticed. He flashed his lights in apology, let it speed past. Then he pulled over, and parked by a ditch.

Three o’clock. It couldn’t take more than half an hour to walk up there, half that time to walk down again. He texted Evie: Stopping at Hencote. Shan’t be long. He got out, locked the car, had a pee behind a bush. Then he wound his scarf round his neck once more, did up every button on his winter coat, and pulled on his gloves. He walked to the foot of the track, he began the climb.

 

It was incredibly cold. He was stiff and slow, and halfway up, as a wind began to rise, he almost turned back. But the moor stretched away so magnificently, and every now and then a fitful sun made an appearance. He climbed on, breathing hard, stopping when he had to, feeling the misery of the morning slip away. He was up high. Up high was good. And there were the sheep, moving slowly in and out of the browning bracken, stopping to stare at him, as they always did. He greeted them, climbed on, determined to find the place now.

Ten minutes later, there it was, in profile. That must be it. A little grey house miles from anywhere. He stopped to get his breath, take it all in: even from here, he could see there were holes in the roof; a bit further on, he saw the broken windows. Across the grass, a thorn tree was bent almost double: relentless moorland wind would have done that. A tumbledown shed stood beneath it. Slowly he walked on, walked round it all. A sheep bounced away at the back.

He returned to the front, and looked down the hillside. Far below, smoke rose from the chimney of a farm – a good-looking place, with a barn and good outbuildings. It made him think of Mike and Evie’s place. And it made him think that his father would have looked down on this farm every day, would probably have known the farmer, whoever had been there then.

He let quietude sink in. Lapwing were beating their way across the valley; as soon as he heard it, he knew their high sad piping. Other than that, there was nothing: only the wind, the sheep cropping the tough moorland grass, rustling through the bracken. Only the soaring sky.

The sun had gone. He clapped his hands on his arms, feeling the cold bite deeper. He must go. But just for a few minutes longer he’d stay here, in this forgotten place which must once have meant everything: to his father, to his first young wife.

In loving memory of Margaret Coulter, née Ridley . . .

Just once he’d seen her grave, out at Cawbeck.

He turned, now, the cottage behind him, and stood looking out over the leafless trees far below on the road, trying to see the distant town, the school. He could just make it out, standing there where his father must often have stood, looking down on the track where he’d walked day after day in all weathers.

The wind was rising. It felt all at once as if it were blowing right through his life, summoning everything, and he began to think of all the people he’d loved, knowing he was nearing his own end now, bringing them all to mind. His parents. Diana, and George, in quite different ways. Becky. Becky above all. And she was gone: the wind had taken her, as it had taken everyone he’d cared about, except for his children, and grandchildren, and blown them to the farthest reaches of creation. Where were they?

The cold was numbing him. He looked back at the cottage for the last time. He had spent the whole day looking back, yearning for what could never be recaptured. But still. The historian within him began to stir: he was his father’s son, after all, and how he had admired him. And he knew that in the great hush of the past probably nothing was as you’d imagined it to be; as you had heard, or not heard: there would always be something forgotten, or misremembered, or untold.

The wind moved like music over the moor. It began to snow.