The Song of Hartgrove Hall Read online

  ‘Go back to the house. I’m going to dig the tractor out.’

  She nods. I’m grateful that she hasn’t repeated that this was a foolish idea.

  ‘And, Edie, don’t tell them, will you?’

  I can’t bear the thought of my brothers descending into the sludge with their good cheer and riotous teasing.

  ‘It’ll take you all night to do it by yourself. And look, you’re wet through.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘What about Max’s song?’

  ‘It’ll have to wait.’ I try to keep the disappointment from my voice but clearly I don’t manage.

  ‘Here. I’ll give you one. Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I pull my notebook from my coat along with a stub of pencil. She wraps her arms close around her and starts to sing. It takes me a moment to realise that I don’t know the song. I thought I knew her entire repertoire but not this. It’s not in English and I don’t even recognise the language she’s singing in. Her voice sounds different, raw and fierce. She doesn’t look at me while she sings, but out past the house to the blackness of the hill beyond. When she stops, I see that she’s crying. Quickly, angrily, she wipes away her tears, using her sleeve with girlish inelegance. I offer her my handkerchief. She snatches it and, after blowing her nose, stuffs it into her pocket.

  ‘Did you get it?’ she snaps.

  ‘I think so,’ I say, still writing feverishly.

  ‘You can never show this song to anyone. I mean, no one at all. Not ever. Do you understand?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘I’m not Edie Rose. She’s just a song that I sing.’

  ‘I have only the melody. I couldn’t catch the words. What language were you singing in?’

  ‘Yiddish.’

  ‘I’ve never heard it before.’

  ‘Well, now you have.’

  ‘What’s the song about?’

  She gives a low laugh. ‘It’s a folk song, Fox. What are they all about? It’s a song of love and sadness and a lost homeland, a land of milk and snow.’

  I’ve never known her quite so irritable and I daren’t ask for a proper translation.

  ‘Can we please go now?’ she asks, lighting another cigarette, her hands trembling.

  I lean against the tractor. Beside me I hear the uneven sound of her breath. I want to know who taught her the song. She stubs out her cigarette on a mound of melting slush and hums the same strange tune. It suits the dark and the cold.

  ‘Have you ever sung that to Jack?’ I ask when she’s finished.

  ‘No. Just to you.’

  She looks at me with an expression that I can’t read, then turns away. ‘I’m going back to the house. You should come too. You’ll catch cold out here like this.’

  ‘I promise I won’t.’

  I catch a cold. I can’t shake it off and it goes to my chest so that I cough and spit like an old man. Jack buys me special cigarettes in order to smoke out the infection but they taste awful and I throw them away. I struggle to work outside, having to stop every fifteen minutes to hack and wheeze, leaning against the barn or a gatepost. I’m not hungry and I can’t sleep and I’m never, ever warm. The dankness has seeped inside me, and even in bed under an army of blankets I cower and tremble, too cold and too miserable to sleep. In contrast my brothers flourish with farm life. As I shrink and my skin takes on a nasty waxy sheen, they grow broad-shouldered; their faces a bright, wind-whipped red. When I rise at six, cursing the hour, they’re already in the kitchen, having returned from their first round of happy chores on the hill. They eye me with concern and quickly look away. Jack passes me tea and congealing porridge that I can barely eat.

  ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t visit the doctor?’ he asks, as I set the bowl aside.

  ‘I’m fine. Give me a few days and I’ll be all right.’

  He and George exchange glances but say nothing. We know the General’s decree that ‘Only women fuss over trifles’. The more wretched the illness and the more stoically we bear it, the greater the General’s opinion of us. I’m aware that this chasing of his regard is foolhardy but I’m unable to stop myself. As I cough my guts out, bent over the kitchen table, and Jack and George carefully look away, I know that they at least understand.

  Edie does not.

  ‘For God’s sake, man, go back to bed and I’ll send for the doctor.’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right,’ I say, sweating and feeling vomit rise in my throat. I swallow it back down and meander out to the yard. I focus on the cobbles. They need to be sluiced. I wobble over to the tap there and fasten the hose. Triumphant that I’ve managed this without falling over, I turn the stream of water onto the ground. Edie screams.

  ‘You’re pointing it at me! I’m soaked.’

  I croak an apology and aim the hose a little higher, then higher again as she continues to yell. I can’t understand why she’s still making such a fuss as I seem to be watering the sky, which, I decide, is rather pointless as those clouds look very much like rain.

  ‘For pity’s sake,’ says Edie again, and snatches away the hose. ‘You’ve fainted. I’m calling the doctor.’

  ‘Nonsense. Men don’t faint,’ I tell her, curtly.

  ‘Very well, what would you call it?’ she asks from a great height, her head swimming amongst the clouds, and I’m worried she’s going to yell again and I really hope she doesn’t as my head is pulsing red and black.

  ‘I went flop.’

  ‘Yes. Much more manly.’

  Jack and George help me up to bed. Despite being aware of the General’s well-known contempt for afternoon naps taken by anyone other than grandmothers and infants, I sleep.

  It appears that not only have I a lung infection, I also have an ear infection that has caused my eardrum to burst. My hearing is damaged and unless I rest and allow it to heal properly, the loss may be permanent. Edie comes to see me and sits on the edge of my bed. She doesn’t take my hand. She’s not the kind of girl to be comfortable with casual intimacies.

  ‘You need to stop being stupid. All three of you boys are stupid. But you’re simply not allowed to be stupid about your hearing. Your ears are your work tools, and you’re going to be a great composer one day. If you risk your hearing I won’t ever speak to you again.’ She looks terribly serious and gives a tiny, irritated sigh.

  ‘I need to do something. Jack and George need me,’ I say, mostly because it sounds good. I’m not sure that the others would notice if I’m not there for a week or even a month.

  Edie says nothing but she gives me a look to show that she at least isn’t fooled. With a pang of guilt, I conclude that I’m actually relieved at this forced break from days spent out in the soggy fields but I’m disgusted by my own antipathy. My family comes from old country stock. I spent my boyhood barefoot in icy ponds, plunging for the gob and slime of tadpoles, luxuriating in their ooze between my toes. There was joy in it then and I wonder what has changed within me. Have I indeed grown soft? I imagine the General’s snarl of ready disapproval, then the same look from Jack and George, and I shrivel.

  I close my eyes and remember how, even as a boy, I’d tire sooner than the others of filching frogspawn or hunting rabbits or building dens deep in the woods. I’d leave them and tear through the trees to chase a nightingale or else return to the house to play the piano. Or, if the General was at home, I’d line up rocks and ribs of kindling, and mime playing tunes upon an impromptu keyboard. Of course I want to save the old place but I want to do it through music rather than with my bare and chapped hands. Still I want to do something significant, something that makes them all notice, makes Edie notice.

  I have an idea of what I might do. The first day that I’m well enough to sit up, I write to the leader of my old college orchestra, asking them all to visit for a week before Christmas. I have a proposal
for them and I hope they’re game. While I wait, I rest and eat and sleep and slowly recover.

  The morning of their arrival dawns cold and bright. Too impatient to wait in the house, I set off for an early walk. I’m still convalescing and I pick my way down the hill back to the Hall more tired from the effort than I would like to admit. As I reach the edge of the lawn, I notice a small crowd gathered on the steps of the house. I see them only a moment before I hear them, a light and crisp baroque refrain reaching out to greet me. There’s a joyful march of strings and then a pair of flutes, wrapping around one another as easily as a couple of wagtails in song. I wait for the cello, but when it finally comes it’s a semitone sharp. This is what strikes me, so it takes me a moment to acknowledge that there is a small orchestra sitting on the steps of Hartgrove Hall, playing, not well but with enthusiasm, Bach’s fourth orchestral suite.

  ‘You’re a bar late,’ I say to the cello. ‘Everyone, go back to the repeat at the top of Section A.’

  I break off a switch of hazel for a baton and count them in. The second time through is better, although the cello is still sharp.

  ‘Shall we go inside and rehearse the folk-song suite? The cold can’t be helping your tuning,’ I say, once we’ve played it through for the third time.

  It’s jolly nice to see my old chums. The flutes – both girls and both remarkably accomplished – a clutch of violins, a double bass, a French horn player and the rogue cello. I like the cellist very much but not when he’s playing his cello. I rather wish he hadn’t come. Without him the Bach would have been quite acceptable.

  I set the musicians up on the minstrels’ gallery in the great hall. I pass around the sketches of my composition. They’re all handwritten, some a little smudged and bleary with crossings-out. I haven’t written out the part for double bass at all.

  ‘If I give you the piano score, can you make do?’ I ask the bass player.

  He’s a thick-set chap from Aberdeenshire, a laird of some kind, and a miraculous jazz player. If you close your eyes, you’ll believe he’s from South Carolina. But then, I suppose even Scotsmen get the blues.

  He nods and starts to play my chords. He improvises a little and it’s better.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Mark those changes on the score, please.’

  I turn to the leader of the little band. ‘Edward, are you happy?’ One always has to pay court to the first violin.

  ‘Yes. Is that a B flat? I can’t make it out.’

  I scrutinise the score. ‘No. It’s a bit of biscuit. It should be a rest.’

  He makes an elaborate mark with a pencil. I turn to the cellist.

  ‘Colin. If you’re going to play, you need to retune.’

  Edward plays a long C while Colin fumbles to correct his tuning. It’s a slight improvement. I raise my hand and they wait, poised upon the upbeat.

  ‘Again.’

  After the fifth time through, they don’t wait to be told. They listen to my notes, make changes to their scores and are ready.

  ‘Again.’

  Somewhere between the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth play-through, the General emerges from the library to bemoan the noise. We ignore him. During the thirtieth and penultimate run, I’m aware of an audience. This time Colin doesn’t stumble as the flutes pass him Max’s melody; he picks it up and runs with it, neat as a runner in a relay. It rumbles through the strings, deep and rich, and I remember why I love the cello. I look up and see Edie in the hall below, leaning against the great oak mantelpiece.

  ‘Again,’ she says.

  Edward and the string players raise their instruments, but I wave at them to stop. ‘There’s a voice part. Will you sing?’

  I chuck the page over the edge of the gallery and it flutters to the ground. Edie picks it up and reads it quickly.

  ‘All right. But it’s a little low for me.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I say. ‘Trust me.’

  She laughs at my audacity. ‘Very well then, maestro.’

  It’s Christmas Eve. A soggy, rain-soaked evening – nothing picture postcard about it at all. The snow recedes, leaving brown damp earth in its place. Because the woodshed leaks, all the logs are too wet to burn, and nothing dries properly – not us, not our clothes, not the clammy walls of the house – but still people come. Some are curious. They’ve heard whispers about young Fox chasing over the countryside naked, hunting for songs – regrettably George’s penchant for nude running and my song collecting have become inexplicably combined in the minds of our neighbours. Frankly, we don’t mind what they say about us, as long as they come and pay their five shillings for the concert. All proceeds are to go towards purchasing George’s cows.

  The whole county is here, along with most of the village. It’s an unusual social mix. The farmers, carters and labourers linger with their own kind on one side of the hall, silent and uneasy, still buttoned stiffly into their coats, while the county set shudder in elegant but chilly frocks, wearing paste copies of the jewels they sold to pay inheritance tax a generation back, and they discuss one another in too-loud voices. Jack and George move through their ranks, topping up drinks and complimenting the ladies, guffawing at the gentlemen’s jokes and attempting to push tickets for the raffle. It’s an unsavoury but necessary task. None of us has much cash, but I’m grateful to see people buying tickets.

  I notice Colonel and Mrs Winters amongst the crowd. I last saw him the morning Turnworth House was destroyed. I’ve heard they’re living in a flat in Bournemouth with a sea view and central heating. I scrutinise his face and decide it’s lost the grim haunted look from that day. Central heating and promenades along the pier suit him. I wonder what it must be like for them to be back here, swigging sherry with the ghosts of Christmas past. The General struts towards them like a prize rooster and accepts their compliments on the evening as if it has all been his doing. Mrs Winters glances about her and her expression is fixed, stricken. She at least would trade her sea view and warm towels for these old, damp-riddled walls and a fire that smokes.

  Edie lingers beside me on the minstrels’ gallery. ‘Who are you looking at with such intensity? Is it a girl?’

  ‘Just the crowd. A jolly decent turnout, isn’t it?’

  Edie turns to me and smiles. ‘It’s simply terrific. I never thought so many people would come. You’ve done a good thing, Fox.’

  ‘They’ve not heard a note yet. It might all go horribly wrong.’

  ‘It won’t. And if it does, what does it matter? They’ve already paid.’

  ‘You’ll be splendid,’ I say. ‘You always are.’

  She frowns. ‘Don’t say that. That’s what Jack always says regardless of whether I was any good. “Marvellous, darling. Simply marvellous.” From you, I demand honesty.’

  I grin, pleased. ‘All right. Not a word of flattery. And you don’t have to sing those awful popular numbers, not if you don’t want to. Sing what you like.’

  Edie laughs. ‘What is it you call them? My “old tat songs”?’

  I nod, a little ashamed.

  ‘I’m afraid I do have to sing them. It’s not at all what I want. I have to please the audience too. That’s something you still have to learn, Little Fox.’

  ‘You never have to try to please me. I liked your Yiddish song. I think I like it best of all.’

  She’s wearing a deep evergreen dress the colour of fresh yew leaves, with sleeves, a little cape on the shoulders and a pair of grey silk gloves. A tiny gold brooch in the shape of a bird is pinned to her breast. I’ve never seen her look so lovely. I feel light-headed as though I’ve had too much to drink, which I haven’t, not a drop. Not before a performance.

  ‘You look very pretty tonight, Edie.’

  She smiles and a dimple appears in one cheek. ‘Thank you, Harry,’ she says. She’s not called me Harry since we first met and I like it. For a moment she studies me and
then she seizes my hand and squeezes it; her small fingers have surprising strength.

  ‘We’re good friends, you and I, aren’t we, Harry? Tell me that we’re good friends. The best of them.’

  Her eyes are glassy with tears and she blinks them back.

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘The very best of friends.’

  She still doesn’t release my hand and I stare at her, thrilled and somewhat puzzled. She looks as if she wants to confide something and my heart thumps, my blood pulses with electricity. She loves me too. I’m sure of it. At once I feel bad for Jack, but not too bad. For Jack there’s always another girl, and besides, I don’t want to think of him at this moment. I want to think only about Edie. Edie and me.

  She loosens her grasp on my hand.

  ‘Good luck, Harry.’

  She leans over, kisses me on the cheek and walks across the gallery to the bedroom serving as the dressing room for tonight’s singers. I don’t follow her. I’m in no hurry. Luxuriant warmth suffuses my body, more effective than brandy or the hottest of baths. In a minute I need to go and speak to the leader of the orchestra, that utterly pompous lead violin, but not yet, not for another minute. Amongst the local gentry and the villagers lurk critics from the Morning Post and the Western Gazette. I ought to be nervous but I feel only a smooth calm. I know the concert will go well.

  And it does. I guide the orchestra through Edie’s standards without so much as a grimace. And when I steer them out across the less familiar refrains of my folk-song arrangements, the audience comes with us. Edward Bishop might be an arrogant fellow but he’s a damn fine fiddler, and he leads the orchestra with total confidence, his sound as sweet and rich as Dundee cake. We play ‘The Foggy Dew’ and ‘The Seeds of Love’ and I have to swallow a lump in my throat as Edie sings of lost summer love and the violet and the pink. My Symphony in G minor, The Song of Hartgrove Hall, inspired by Max’s theme is the last and best of it. We perform the first and third movements (the second relies too heavily on the cello, who simply isn’t up to it, and the fourth isn’t finished).