The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘No, of course not,’ agreed the doctor.

  He sat patiently for a few minutes while, to my profound dismay, I wept noisily and inelegantly. When my tears slowed, silently he passed me a tissue. I blew my nose, disgruntled and unnerved by my display; it appeared that I had no control over anything at all, not even myself.

  He’d asked, ‘Have you tried writing anything down about—?’

  ‘Edie. Her name was Edie.’

  ‘Have you tried writing down some things about her?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m going to write her a symphony. Well, I’ve been meaning to. I’m a bit stuck.’

  ‘How about starting with something a little less ambitious? You could jot down a memory.’

  I frowned. ‘That’s all rather personal.’

  ‘So what? No one else needs to read it.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  He’d gone back to scrawling notes on his pad. ‘As you like. Some people find it helps.’

  He’d offered no sympathy, for which I was grateful, and I’d left shortly afterwards with a prescription for sleeping tablets – although I observed that he wouldn’t give me too many in case I did something rash. As I’d walked through reception the secretary hailed me.

  ‘Mr Fox-Talbot? Can I just update your details?’

  I’d waited at the counter while she fumbled with her computer.

  ‘We don’t seem to have a recent phone number, Mr Fox-Talbot.’

  ‘Yes, of course. It’s—’

  And I found I couldn’t remember. I’m a half-decent mathematician – most musicians are. But I couldn’t recall my own telephone number. I could remember our very first, the one we were given when we had the telephone installed in the house in 1952, but our present number had disappeared.

  ‘It’s all right, take a minute,’ said the secretary.

  I’d looked at her with her orange lipstick and her too many earrings as she suddenly became very busy, tapping at her keyboard, and I understood that she pitied me. I’d become that old man who’d lost both his wife and his telephone number.

  A few days later, as I sat in my armchair facing my daughters, I wondered for a second whether the surgery receptionist had called them but I supposed she couldn’t have done – confidentiality and all that. For a second I saw them not as they were then, but as they’d once been. Clara, stern and immaculately attired in her party frock, patent shoes shining and her long blonde hair in two perfectly gleaming plaits which she twirled as she spoke. Lucy, tiny and quiet, dressed in an identical blue frock but somehow contriving to be as untidy as her sister was neat, her dark hair sprouting from the ends of her pigtails and her small feet stuck out before her, revealing two odd socks and no shoes.

  I blinked and my grown-up daughters replaced the apparitions. I pushed the biscuits at Clara, who declined, and at Lucy, who took two.

  ‘Stop fretting. I’ll be all right,’ I said, not because I believed it but because they wanted it to be true.

  ‘Will you go to this dance then? It’s for OAPs. They always need men.’

  ‘No, darling, I won’t. I’m not going to foxtrot with strangers in the village hall.’

  ‘When will you start arranging this year’s music festival?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘I thought I might take this year off. I’m a little tired,’ I said, not looking at them.

  Immediately I knew that I’d said the wrong thing. I could feel their intake of breath. I wished I’d fibbed and said something about this year’s theme being loss and hope or some such nonsense, even if I knew I’d never go through with it and would have had to pretend in a few months that all the soloists I’d invited were mysteriously busy this year. But I didn’t think fast enough and as soon as the words left my mouth I knew that I was in for it and Operation ‘Buck Up Papa’ was moving up a gear.

  I waited for a week but nothing happened, apart from the usual calls from Clara on her car phone during the school run with the children shrieking in the back about forgotten swimming kits and unfinished homework. Clara always called me when she was occupied with something else as though proving to us all just how many things she could juggle at once. I wished she’d call less often when she actually had a moment to talk.

  There were messages on the answer phone from Lucy who, I’m certain, timed her calls for when she knew I’d be out or in the shower. She wished me to know that she was concerned but would prefer not to actually speak to me when the conversation was both predictable and uncomfortable.

  Lucy: ‘How are you today?’

  Me: ‘I’ve been better.’

  Lucy: ‘Did you manage to play at all?’

  Me: ‘No.’

  I would have preferred to leave messages on my answer phone and avoid me too.

  I spent the week as usual, drifting through loose and identical days, dreary except for grief. At night I couldn’t sleep. I’d lie awake in the small hours, aware of every creak and click of wood and the cold space beside me. During the days I was so tired. A weariness settled in my bones, as if they’d been boiled too long and softened into marrow. Even though I’d potter quietly through the afternoon and be careful not to nap, not for a minute – come night-time, there I was, lying awake in the dark, listening to the hum and rattle of the house.

  Memories drifted through my mind unsummoned and I’d be forced to watch, passive and powerless to staunch them. All I wanted was dull and dreamless sleep but instead I’d see Edie trying to pin up her hair before a concert, hands shaking so badly that I had to help. She suffered from terrible stage fright throughout her career, but no one ever knew apart from me. Sleep receded from me, and I found myself holding a trembling ghost of Edie in the wings of the Royal Albert Hall, her dress slick with sweat. A stagehand appeared and politely enquired as to whether she was all right, to which she replied, ‘Absolutely fine,’ and promptly vomited in the fire bucket.

  I remembered how Edie used to disappear off on her snow walks in the night and, half awake, I’d try to fool myself that she’d just gone for a wander through the gardens, perhaps as far as the hill. But Edie went walkabout only on the wintriest of nights, and inevitably the next thing I’d hear was the warble of a chiffchaff or I’d inhale the treacherous scent of jasmine through the open window, and I’d know it was summer and I wasn’t even permitted the respite of pretence. I’d lapse into an exhausted doze shortly before dawn, wondering whether this was to be the rest of my existence: an endless replay of our marriage, the repeats slowly losing their clarity and colour.

  Before Edie died, I’d never lived alone. Even when she took a trip without me, the housekeeper would live in while she was gone – I’m of the generation where men are considered useless, helpless creatures unable to boil an egg without assistance. I’d achieved the age of seventy-odd, having spent hardly a night in the house on my own. But when Edie died, I couldn’t bear the thought of a stranger sleeping there. I feared an outsider would drive away the last pieces of her. I didn’t want a stranger looking at Edie’s things with an uninformed eye. Objects divorced from their stories are downgraded to mere knick-knacks.

  I rejected Clara and Lucy’s suggestion that we find a permanent live-in housekeeper. They were baffled by the vehemence of my refusal. I declined to explain. The truth was that it seemed perilously close to assisted living. One day the housekeeper would no longer simply cook and clean and shop but help me dress and then wash and, before I knew what had happened, I’d have a live-in carer. Even if I lived off microwave meals and suppers at the pub, I would remain independent. I found a pleasant and efficient woman from the village, Mrs Stroud, who agreed to come three times a week to cook and clean.

  It might have been the right choice but I was unprepared for the loneliness. Some days it was worse than the grief. If grief is the thug who punches you in the gut, then loneliness is his goon who holds back your arms and renders you helpl
ess before the onslaught. For the first time in my life, silence taunted me. I despise background music, incidental music, music to create ambience – whatever you want to call it. Music must be attended to or there must be silence. However, it had rarely been silent in my head; my mind had filled any quiet with music. Sometimes it would be my own – a piece I’d written or that I was about to write – or perhaps just a little Mozart. Not after Edie. Then the world became horribly quiet. A dismal hush crept through everything like a scourge of damp.

  My thoughts echoed through the house. I heard the shuffle of my footsteps along the hall – when did I start to have the gait of an old man? To my shame, I started to watch the television for company during lunch, and found myself caught in the concocted melodramas of the soaps. I spoke aloud to myself, as otherwise, if the telephone didn’t ring, on the days Mrs Stroud didn’t come, by four or five o’clock I wouldn’t have uttered a word all day. When the postman knocked on the door with a package that needed to be signed for, I talked at him for too long, with too much focus, and he backed down the steps to escape.

  In desperation one night, I reached for the notepad I always left on the bedside table in case musical inspiration appeared in the small hours. Perhaps the GP was right. No one needed to read a blasted word if I didn’t wish them to. Instead of melody, I tried transcribing stray memories and wondered whether by doing so I could store them safely, recall them by choice instead of being assaulted by them in the dark. I discovered that scribbling was better than lying awake fretting. Writing turned one’s own thoughts into a companion of sorts. It helped, only a little, but it was something. I popped down anything that came to mind, bits and pieces about our early years but also details about the last days, weeks and months: my other life, life after Edie.

  After a week or two, I’d nearly forgotten about the girls’ visit and I’d stopped wondering what they were plotting. Even now, I can’t be quite sure that what happened was a scheme. Clara – self-contained, elegant Clara, the girl who used to brush her dolls’ hair before school each morning and set them homework (which she marked with a stern red pen) – was much too upset, too chaotic for me to be certain it had been planned. If it had, then my eldest daughter was a much more accomplished actress than I’d ever given her credit for.

  That morning, shortly before nine o’clock I heard a car tearing along the gravel. The unhappy squeal of brakes. I hurried downstairs in my dressing gown to find Clara already in the kitchen and in tears.

  ‘Darling, what happened? Is everyone all right?’

  ‘Yes. No. I need a break. I have to have some time to myself or I’m going to go completely potty. Can you watch him? Just for a couple of hours?’

  It was only then that I noticed Robin, my small blond grandson, in the corner of the kitchen. He’d opened one of the cupboards and was foraging unabashed.

  ‘The nursery is full today. Staffing issues or some such nonsense.’

  I hadn’t seen Clara cry since the funeral. And here she was, weeping in my kitchen, clutching at the counter.

  ‘It’s all right.’ I reached out ineffectually to pat her shoulder.

  ‘It isn’t. Will you take him, Papa? Just for a bit?’

  I looked at Robin, who’d finished hunting through the cupboard and, having filched a box of chocolates dolefully forgotten at the back, was squatting on the floor and proceeding to unwrap them one by one, squashing them improbably into his mouth all at once. He dribbled chocolate ooze onto his T-shirt.

  ‘He’s impossible. The girls were never like this. I just don’t know what to do with him. He never listens to me. Not a word,’ said Clara, making no attempt to reprimand him, and then crumpled.

  I looked at my usually rigid and far too stoic daughter, and wondered how long this trouble had been festering. Had I been told? I couldn’t remember.

  ‘You go,’ I said. ‘We’ll be quite all right.’

  ‘Really?’ She managed to sound simultaneously hopeful and doubtful.

  ‘Of course,’ I declared with a confidence I did not feel.

  Clara left, her eyes red from crying, and I turned back to the boy. Robin, a sturdy little chap of four, had just the same blue eyes as his great-uncle Jack. I softened.

  ‘Well, here we go then. Shall we have a splendid day together?’

  ‘No,’ said Robin, the only word he’d uttered since entering the kitchen.

  Edie was the one who was good with the children. She adored being a grandmother. The children rushed at her, brimming with joy, while they knocked on my study door with quiet obligation, eager to receive the square of chocolate kept in my desk drawer for this purpose, then scampered off, more eager still to escape back to Edie. It would have been pleasant to know them a little better, but I hadn’t the time, nor, if I’m quite honest, a powerful enough inclination. I was still working then, and the music in my brain buzzed as powerfully as a headache, needing to be transcribed, and, selfish or not, I wanted to write more than I wanted to be bothered with scraped knees and the rattle of young creatures.

  When Clara had her first two children – both girls – she was still living in Scotland. Edie vanished up there for each birth and the weeks that followed, while I sent encouraging messages. Allowing Edie’s prolonged absences without – well, with only minimal – complaint felt like sufficient solidarity. I knew rather than felt that I liked being a grandfather. Everyone told me I must be very proud and so I supposed it must be true. It was gratifying to see the family line continue but I felt little responsibility to nurture or tend the individuals adding to it. I’m not suggesting that this shows the better side to my character, but that’s how it was. When Edie became ill and Clara moved closer I was grateful. But already lost in anticipated grief, I barely noticed the tottering boy who now accompanied his older sisters on their visits. He seemed a trifle loud, a touch unruly perhaps, and, if I think about it, there were a few more breakages than there had been with the granddaughters: smashed china bells and things ending up on the fire that really shouldn’t have. But when I did notice, I simply put down the spoiled teapot or the singed telephone directory to the dastardly ways of boys.

  I had never been alone with Robin before. I tried to remember what to do with a small child.

  ‘Have you eaten breakfast? Are you hungry?’

  It seemed a little moot as the young fellow was standing amidst the confetti of discarded chocolate wrappers.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No to which, Robin? You need to be clear. No, you haven’t had breakfast or no, you aren’t hungry?’

  He studied me for a moment before screwing up his face.

  ‘No.’

  I decided that whatever the little bugger thought, I wanted breakfast – I sensed already that I might need some sustenance for what lay ahead. He watched me, motionless, as I ate toast and drank tea. He stuck a finger up his nose. I offered him a hankie. He declined. He grabbed a glass of orange juice and tipped it down his front. I handed him a towel. He chucked it on the floor and proceeded to remove his damp shirt, and then also his shoes, followed by his trousers. I felt a creep of unease as I contemplated the hours before me.

  ‘Aren’t you cold?’ I enquired, politely.

  ‘No.’ He removed his socks. ‘Where’s Grandma?’

  I suddenly felt terribly tired. Surely Clara had explained it to him. I rifled through the appropriate vocabulary. ‘Grandma’s passed away.’

  ‘Is she in heaven?’ asked Robin.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I answered, anxious to have the conversation concluded, whether or not I believed it was true.

  Robin paused for a moment, considering.

  ‘I hate heaven,’ he announced. ‘It’s full of dead people.’

  ‘Have some toast and marmalade,’ I said.

  —

  Concerned for the fate of the kitchen cupboards, should I have left him alone while I showere
d and dressed, I persuaded him to come with me to the bathroom. He came along surprisingly meekly and watched with interest while I tried to pee.

  ‘It takes you a long time to wee-wee, Grandpa.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not polite to make a comment.’

  I took off my spectacles and stepped into the shower, keeping up a veritable tirade of chit-chat. I was considering that perhaps company wasn’t such a bad thing, when I stepped out of the shower and onto the contents of an entire tube of toothpaste, coiled like a white turd on the bathmat. As I put on my spectacles, I saw that a packet of eight toilet rolls had been disembowelled and shoved down the loo. Robin stood before me in his underpants, wielding the ancient and foul toilet brush like a sword.

  I cleared up the mess as best I could and, failing entirely to persuade Robin back into his clothes, dressed myself sharpish. The boy followed me into the dressing room, chucked out all my shoes onto the carpet and then started to try on Edie’s high heels. As yet I hadn’t been able to face clearing out her things, and Robin took full advantage, yanking a sequinned gown from its hanger and careering around the dressing room with it wrapped around his neck like a spangled python. After one or two feeble attempts at objecting – the boy sensed right away that my heart wasn’t really in it – I watched him. The odd thing was that he didn’t seem to take any pleasure in his mischief. He wreaked havoc but, like a criminal meting out a perfunctory beating on the orders of his boss, his naughtiness had an habitual weariness to it.

  He careered along the corridor towards the open door to the music room, yelping and trailing Edie’s gown along with him. I followed, more curious than anxious as to what he might do, until I saw him rush straight for a photograph album. He pulled it off the chair where I’d left it and started to tear out photos. Pictures of Edie cascaded on the carpet, and I lunged to catch her, but the boy grabbed them out of my hand and with a shriek crumpled them. Desperate, I tried to stop him, but I was too slow and he dodged out of my grasp. I’d never felt such anger towards a child – I’m glad I hadn’t caught him, for if I had I surely would have struck him. Rage spooled inside me. Pure glorious rage. After weeks of nothing but vacant grief I was flooded with colour. I took a moment to revel in it and then looked again at the blue-eyed boy with his fistful of photos. He looked at me and ripped one in half. I cried out. The pictures were old ones. Black and whites taken decades ago. He was stealing fragments of Edie from me. I wouldn’t let him.