The Song of Hartgrove Hall Read online

  This afternoon any make-up has been washed clean away by the swim and she seems less contained and for once unselfconscious as she strides through the grass. She plucks the petals from a daisy, scattering them on the verge. There is a tiny streak of mud on her cheek and I don’t tell her, knowing that, as soon as I do, she’ll seize her pocket handkerchief and scrub it off, self-conscious again. I prefer her like this.

  We’re to walk to Christopher Lodder’s cottage and afterwards back to the Hall. It’s a longish walk – nearly seven miles all told – but Edie assures me she can manage it. Also I don’t want Jack appearing at the cottage after an hour or whenever he’s bored, to collect us in the car. He never can keep time. Things happen precisely when he wishes them to. I make an effort to slow my pace again – I have the itch of excitement I always get when I’m off song collecting.

  ‘When we were boys George pressed leaves, orchids and butterflies between the pages of his schoolbooks so he could take little bits of Hartgrove with him. With me it was songs so I could listen to home. There’s nothing better for remembering. The songs from a place, the ones that grow there and have been sung down the generations, those are the ones that capture the essence of it. They’re like the specific smell of river mud, except that when you’re away from the river you can’t quite recall it precisely.’

  ‘And Jack? What did Jack take?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing, Jack never gets homesick, as far as I can tell. Wherever he goes, he’s the centre of it all, magnificently present, never pining for anywhere else.’

  She makes no reply, knowing it to be true.

  ‘The tunes are often the same but, if you listen carefully enough, you spot a variation in the last verse and the words inevitably change from singer to singer. The best folk songs are living things, shifting with each performance. You can never really catch them.’

  ‘But you still try?’

  I laugh. ‘Of course.’

  Old Lodder doesn’t mind that I’ve brought Edie. In fact, it rather perks him up. He looks right past me but ushers her inside to the coolness of the cottage, seating her in the best chair by the window with a view of the vegetable patch and its row of exquisite green lettuces squatting in the earth. In the distance the river glints and I can hear goldcrests squabbling in the bulrushes.

  Lodder is so tall and angular, it’s a wonder he fits into the low cottage – he’s hunching as he disappears into the kitchen concealed behind a fading curtain. It’s cramped and dark in the parlour, the walls painted brown in the Victorian fashion of seventy years earlier and the low beams stained darker still. There’s a milking stool, two good chairs, a solid and handsome dresser on which is displayed a hotchpotch of mismatching china. The only picture on the wall is a photograph of a stern, austere woman buttoned into a high-necked gown. I can’t tell whether it was his grandmother, mother or wife. The room smells very strongly of cabbage. An overflowing bucket of vegetable peelings and slops perspires nicely beside the range. To my excitement, there is no wireless and I’m hopeful of finding a good song hoard, full of old tunes, not just popular hits. I arrange my manuscript pad on my knee and sharpen my pencil.

  ‘What happens next?’ whispers Edie, conscious of Lodder busily brewing tea like a magician behind the partition curtain.

  ‘I’ll ask him to sing us some songs. Hopefully there’ll be something we haven’t heard before and, if there is, I’ll write it down.’

  ‘Do you write down the melody or the words?’

  ‘I try to do both. I sometimes get in a bit of a muddle.’

  ‘Let me help. Give me a page and I’ll try to scribble down the words. I don’t think I could manage the tune accurately enough. I don’t have perfect pitch like you.’

  Before I can ask how she can tell that I have perfect pitch – which I do; it’s a source of both satisfaction and irritation – Lodder reappears with a tea tray laden with chipped teacups and a saucer of stale biscuits. Dutifully we sip. He sits on the milking stool apparently perfectly comfortable, his spindly legs folded up beside his ears like a daddy-longlegs.

  ‘This one’s fer you, missy,’ he says, grinning at Edie, and he launches into a rendition of Edie’s most celebrated hit, ‘A Shropshire Thrush’. I sag and rub my eyes. It was a mistake to have brought her with me. We listen politely. It never does to interrupt.

  ‘That was very pleasant, Mr Lodder,’ I say.

  ‘An honour to sing it fer the lady,’ he declares, clearly pleased as Punch with himself. ‘I never thought I’d see the day. Never thought it.’

  ‘But we’d love – Miss Rose would love to hear one of your own songs. Your nephew told me that you know some Dorset folk songs.’

  He frowned. ‘What you want to hear that stuff fer?’

  Edie leans forward. ‘I’d like to hear something. I’d like it very much.’

  He pauses, scratches his nose. ‘All righty. Fer the lady then.’ He refolds his legs and then sings in a clear baritone.

  The notes flutter out of the open window and I hear the goldcrests fall silent for a moment as though they’re listening too. There’s a dignity to him as he sings. He nods once to Edie and then seemingly forgets her, forgets there is any audience at all; he’s alone with his song. It’s unmistakably English, like the scurry of oak leaves shaking in the rain. As the sound floods the gloomy little parlour I’m filled with a sense of rightness as though he is singing my own thoughts back to me. I’ve heard variations on this song before. However, it’s not its familiarity that is raising the hairs along the back of my neck, but the shiver of loss and longing, and the knowledge that I’m listening to a melody sung down the generations. In his voice I hear a score of other voices converge and there is a shining moment when I can see both forwards and backwards, when time rocks to and fro upon the empty hearth.

  —

  Afterwards we stroll outside. I’m as tickled as anything. I have two new songs for my collection. I expect they’re probably variants of other more common songs but it doesn’t matter. I like the tune of one in particular and I know it will rattle around inside me for the rest of the day. I experience a supine contentment as if I’d eaten a meaty dinner. I want to sit down and have a cold glass of something and smoke a fag. I also want to look over Edie’s notes – she’s been dashing off pages like a schoolgirl in an exam – but it seems impolite in front of the old chap.

  We dawdle through the garden. Lodder lives alone and it’s a man’s patch – thoroughly practical, stocked solely with things to eat, the only flowers permitted to bloom here being repellents to discourage pests from devouring the vegetables. There’s a village of sheds, ugly but useful. Lodder picks slugs off his lettuces between a stout forefinger and thumb, and flings them at the hawthorn hedge with some precision, where they hang on the prickles like wet grey baubles. A skinny and lonesome goat watches us from its tether in a circle of dirt. Edie makes towards it with a coo, but Lodder grunts a warning.

  ‘I wouldn’t, if I were yoos. She’ll git you something nasty.’

  Edie stops short and the goat strains at its tether, horns down.

  ‘Lil bitch,’ says Lodder with a fond chuckle. ‘If only I could ’ave kept the wife out here. ’Ere, ’ave a tomato. Lovely ’n’ sweet.’

  Edie eats her tomato in silence, her eyes wide, and I want to laugh. Lodder’s hamming it up for her benefit and I wonder whether she can tell.

  ‘Miserable buggers, them songs. They’re all ’bout lost things – sweethearts, youth, maidenhead—’

  I shrug, conscious of the late hour and recognising that, although I’m pleased with the songs I’ve heard, the pleasure is starting to wear off and I’m already wanting something else but I can’t properly explain to Lodder what it is since I don’t know myself what I’m hunting for. Perhaps it’s simply the desire for another song; there’s always one more to be found.

  Lodder grinds a snail und
er his boot and then with a grin points to the compost heap. ‘Slowworm,’ he says with some satisfaction.

  The tiny snake snoozes in the last of the afternoon sunshine, a perfect silver coil.

  —

  Edie strides along, her cardigan draped around her shoulders. I fall into step beside her, relieved she doesn’t seem tired – I feel guilty about making her walk so far. The sun slinks behind the hill and it becomes abruptly cool, as if all the doors and windows of a fire-warmed room had suddenly been thrown open to the outside. The sky is clear and the earth holds no heat. We pass our former picnic spot. There is nothing to see but flattened grass. The cattle snort in the gloom. The hills are daubed with red for a few minutes and then smothered by darkness. As our eyes adjust we walk in silence, listening to a hurry of blackbirds calling evensong. A mistle thrush sings a counterpoint to their tune. At the bridge Edie pauses. I move and stand beside her. The black water gurgles in the dark.

  ‘Let me catch myself, just for a minute,’ she says.

  ‘Here.’

  I pass her some cherries smuggled into my pocket from lunch, wrapped up in the magnolia petals. She eats them, spitting the stones into the river below. She spits them quite a distance and I’m impressed. Singer’s lungs, I suppose, lots of puff.

  ‘So you can remember every song you’ve ever heard?’ she asks, not looking at me but out into the gathering dusk.

  ‘I’ve a good ear for melodies.’

  It’s true. I remember every song. Well, almost every song. I stare across the flat water meadows towards the shoulder of Hartgrove Hill.

  ‘I discovered a whole crew of musicians this term. It was perfectly wonderful. I was a starving man. I didn’t know I’d spent my whole life hungry until gorging at my first proper feast.’

  ‘It is a relief to be amongst other musicians. But then it can also be a relief to be away from them,’ Edie says with a smile, and I wonder whether this is one of Jack’s attractions.

  ‘I think I’m probably going to fail my exams. I’m afraid that I’ve ignored my studies and signed up to every music society instead. Orchestras. Quartets. I even play piano for the jazz band. I didn’t much like the choirs. Too clean. Too quiet. Too lovely.’

  Edie laughs. ‘Yes, I’ve never been fond of choirs. Unless I’m the soloist, of course. I don’t mind them harmonising patiently in the background.’

  I grin at this sudden and rare flash of the diva. ‘My mother used to sing to me. So I’m told.’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  I shake my head. ‘I was so young when she died. But sometimes I catch a tune and it feels so familiar that I wonder whether she sang it to me. I know she liked folk songs.’

  She stares at me with a look of such wistfulness that I suppose I ought to feel sorry for myself but I don’t. Instead, I turn away, embarrassed, conscious of talking too much, and I’m relieved she can’t see me properly in the darkness.

  ‘I say, can I take a peep at your notes?’ I ask, eager to turn the conversation.

  She hands them over, nibbling at her nail as I study them. I produce a torch from my pocket. The battery’s nearly spent but it’s sufficient to more or less make out the scribbled lyrics. Instantly I know it’s quite hopeless and if I want an accurate transcription I’ll have to go back and listen to Mr Lodder again, but she’s studying me with such eagerness.

  ‘Is it any good?’

  ‘It’s entertaining.’

  She frowns. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you see here that you’ve got “the girl with the cabbage”? It’s actually “the girl Will ravished”.’

  ‘Oh. I see. Ravished, not cabbage.’

  ‘’Fraid so.’

  ‘It’s the Dorset accent.’

  ‘Quite. Very hard to understand.’

  I’m helpless with laughter and Edie’s laughing too, grabbing her notes back and swatting me with them. Before I can stop her she’s chucked them into the river. They swirl for a second and then, sodden, are pulled away downstream.

  ‘Oh, what a shame! I was looking forward to those.’

  ‘Beast.’

  She pulls on her cardigan, races along the path leading away from the river and scrambles up the bank of the hill towards the Hall and Jack.

  We arrive at the boundary of the Hartgrove estate tipsy with laughter. It’s been a glorious day and I’m calculating how many more she’s likely to stay. I dawdle as we reach the long drive, reluctant to reach the others, but to my surprise Jack and George are walking out to meet us.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ says Edie, reaching up to kiss Jack’s cheek, but he hardly seems to notice. He stares only at me. I see that George is equally grim-faced.

  ‘Canning has given notice,’ says George.

  ‘That is a pity,’ I say, not understanding why this news has caused Jack to look quite so bereft. I turn to Edie. ‘Canning has managed the estate for thirty years. No, more. He’ll be tricky to replace.’

  ‘He’s not going to be replaced,’ says George.

  ‘No, of course, he’s irreplaceable,’ I say, irritated now by my brothers’ sentimentality. Canning is a decent fellow, a thoroughly good sort who managed both the estate and the General with some determination, but if he wants to retire, it’s not for us to make a fuss.

  ‘The General is not going to replace him at all,’ says George.

  ‘We’re completely out of money,’ says Jack. ‘The Fox-Talbots are utterly broke.’

  ‘The General is going to dynamite the Hall and auction off the land,’ adds George, quietly.

  My breath catches. The evening is hushed as if the wind had suddenly died. We’ve reached the steps of the house. We all sit and look out into the night. I’m shaking, whether with anger or grief I can’t tell.

  ‘It would have been better if the whole bloody place had just burned down in the war. To have her back only to lose her again like this. It’s beastly,’ says Jack.

  Edie’s sobbing noiselessly into her handkerchief and I’m glad in a way that one of us is able to cry.

  ‘I don’t want to see her go up,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t bear that.’

  I know that afterwards I’ll never come here again. The break must be clean. I can’t walk these woods and sneak through these valleys as a stranger trespassing on another man’s land. I don’t want to stand on the ridge and look down on a handsome new house where ours once stood. No, when she’s gone, I shan’t come back.

  ‘How long do we have left?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s all arranged for next week,’ says George.

  August 2000

  I insisted on giving Robin music lessons myself. Clara and I very nearly had a row about it.

  ‘Mrs Claysmore is terribly good. All the mothers swear by her.’

  ‘I’m sure she is, darling. But teaching Robin won’t be like teaching other children. We need to be cautious.’

  Clara smoothed her already creaseless skirt. We were sitting side by side in the kitchen, both of us resolutely gazing out at the rain-soaked lawns so that we didn’t have to look directly at each other. We couldn’t possibly have an uncomfortable tête-à-tête while making eye contact. The gardener puttered up and down on the lawn tractor, puffing out black smoke. It made a God-awful racket, leaving nasty gouges in the sodden grass. I wished he’d use the hand mower as I’d asked but that was another battle I couldn’t face – my stomach for petty conflict had dwindled after Edie died. The smaller the task, the less I could bear it.

  Clara frowned – a tiny furrow appearing in her forehead – and stared pointedly at the garden, but under the table I could see her knee tap-tapping in irritation.

  ‘I don’t want to single him out. Push him. All the books say that’s very risky.’

  I swallowed my exasperation. As soon as I’d told her that her son had a gift for music, she’d retreated
into books, desperate for the reassurance of so-called experts. I refrained from reminding her that I was also considered an expert in music, even if in nothing else. I stared at the black clouds, solid as barrage balloons, threatening more rain, and when I spoke, I made sure my voice was gentle.

  ‘Music lessons with his grandpa isn’t pushy. We won’t work any longer than he can manage. I want it to be fun. Music ought to be a pleasure.’

  ‘Mrs Claysmore will be most put out. I’ll probably lose my deposit.’

  I wanted to say bugger Mrs sodding Claysmore but I said nothing and just wrote her a cheque for the lost deposit. The truth is that I wasn’t willing to surrender Robin to another teacher. I wanted to see for myself what the boy could do.

  —

  It was arranged that he’d come to me three mornings each week. I’d wanted five but Clara had insisted it was too much – whether for me or for him, I wasn’t sure. But I supposed, begrudgingly, she was probably right. During the first weeks and months after Edie, I had seemed to drift around the house in a permanent state of tiredness and irritability. Perhaps five days with a young, inexhaustible child in constant motion would have been too much.

  I found that I was nervous. I had the jitters in my belly as though I were about to enter into rehearsals with a strange and hostile symphony orchestra rather than tinkle Mozart with my own grandson. I began to fret that, in my discombobulated state of mind, I’d over-egged the boy’s gift. Perhaps what had happened that day wasn’t so remarkable. Or perhaps it was merely a fluke and Robin had no real interest in music. As Clara and I negotiated terms, days and then a week, then two, ticked by and I began to doubt my own memory of that afternoon.

  I lay awake all night before our first lesson, wishing that I could talk it through with Edie. When she was alive, I would store up the trivial details of my day to tell her. They hadn’t needed to be interesting. After a lifetime together, it’s not one’s great passions that create intimacy; it’s not the mutual love of Beethoven or Italian wine, but ordinary things. Without her, when I heard the first cuckoo of spring I had no one to tell. I found that sapphire earring she lost in ’93 and that we claimed for on the insurance. It was wedged inside the lining of a cufflink box. No one else would be interested, nor should they be, but Edie would have been tickled. I didn’t mention these things to anyone but the truth is that it’s these bric-a-brac moments that make up a shared life. The grand events: the births of one’s children, their first day at school or signing my first recording contract with Decca – these shine a little brighter, but they are only a tiny proportion of one’s life together; a handful of stars in the night sky. It was the mundane, frankly dull things I missed the most. I missed not talking to her over breakfast. We’d ignored one another over toast and morning coffee with great pleasure for nearly fifty years.