The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  Then I see that the dancers have stopped and the accordion is no longer playing and the General is signalling for whisky, while I can still hear nothing but the music and I know I shall have no peace at all until I’ve written it down. I excuse myself and race upstairs to sprawl on the bed with a pad of manuscript paper as the music spews forth and my hand cramps around my pen and then I’m finished and at last the room is quiet. In relief, I close my eyes. There is only the faintest of aches behind them.

  I return downstairs. The dancers mill in the great hall, swigging whisky and making conversation, and they no longer seem otherworldly. The smell of sweat mingles with woodsmoke and ever-present mildew. They laugh uproariously at some joke of Jack’s but Edie isn’t listening, she’s watching me. I walk over to her side.

  ‘Where did you vanish to?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s an odd tune. Not one I know, so I had to write it down.’

  She studies me for a moment. ‘Is that something you do often? Collect songs?’

  ‘From time to time.’

  She makes it sound as if I’m a butterfly hunter and I suppose I am in a way, a hoarder of melodies. When I find one I don’t know, I have to catch it, pin it into my book and fix it there. I don’t need to look at it again once I have it. Writing a melody down, I transcribe it twice – once into my manuscript book and once into my memory. The horn-dancers’ song will always be with me now.

  ‘Will you show me later?’

  ‘If you like.’

  I shrug, feigning indifference, but I’m perfectly thrilled. No one’s been remotely interested in my song-scribbling habit before.

  —

  After dinner I prowl beside the fire, eager to go to her, but no one may ever leave the dining room and return to the ladies before the General declares we may. Jack attempted it once but even he was rebuked. I have stashed the manuscript book in the cubbyhole in the ladies’ sitting room that we still call the Chinese room even though the stencilled chinoiserie wallpaper was spoiled a decade ago and the sole Oriental item remaining is a japanned cabinet that is missing a door. We no longer use the drawing room after dinner when we are so few. It is too large and on bitter evenings frost gathers on the inside of the windowpanes, stalking along damp patches on the wall.

  Jack is yawning and only George pretends attention as the General recounts a gory battle during the second Boer War that we’ve all heard before. I wonder how they can bear his nostalgia for Boy’s Own adventures after all they’ve seen. Again I wish they’d furnish me with the details. I feel peevish and the distance of the years between us grates. I feel much as I did when I was a boy of eight, and they at the grand ages of sixteen and thirteen sloped off to the barn to get blind drunk on filched cider, leaving me as their resentful lookout.

  At last, piqued by our indifference, the General slams down his brandy glass and, muttering oaths of disappointment under his breath, stalks to the door. Chivers opens it for him, and I feel the echo of his disapproval as we file out. Edie waits alone in the Chinese room; she’s reading but puts her book aside as we enter. It does not occur to the General that keeping her in purdah for nearly an hour, while he regales us with stories of his youth, was rude. I spy my manuscript book in the cubbyhole beside the fireplace and I’m all eagerness to show her but it’s Jack at whom Edie’s smiling with simple pleasure. She lets him kiss her cheek but when the General gives a cough of displeasure Jack kisses her again, this time on the mouth. Edie squirms and gently pushes him away.

  ‘Yes, yes, righto,’ declares the General. He squats on the edge of a low chair, his back ramrod straight. I’ve never known anyone who makes after-dinner relaxation look quite so uncomfortable. ‘I suppose you travelled about a bit during the war, Miss Rose.’

  She pulls Jack down to sit beside her and neatly crosses her ankles. ‘Yes, a fair bit.’

  ‘Did you get east? Cairo? Luxor?’

  ‘I went to Cairo twice.’

  ‘Palestine?’

  Edie nods.

  ‘God, it’s a bloody mess over there. Skulduggery, murder. Civil war.’

  ‘I thought you enjoyed a decent war. It’s your favourite spectator sport after the Badbury point-to-point. You could put a fiver on each way,’ says Jack.

  I glance at him in alarm, presuming he drank too much at dinner, but to my surprise he seems quite sober.

  George looks worried. ‘Steady on, old chap,’ he mutters.

  The General chooses to ignore Jack and simply carries on. He regards a second voice in a conversation as unnecessary. Company is present merely to provide him with an audience.

  ‘It’s the ingratitude of the bloody Jews that galls me. Bloody ingratitude.’

  ‘What would you have them be grateful to us for?’ asks Jack sweetly, and with that I know the conversation is becoming dangerous but I’m not quite sure why.

  Edie places her hand firmly on Jack’s knee. ‘Would you mind ringing for a glass of water, darling? I’m terribly dry.’

  While Jack reaches for the bell to ring for Chivers, Edie turns to me. ‘May I take a look at the song?’

  To my chagrin, I grasp that she’s asking only in order to alter the course of the conversation. They all watch as I pull out the manuscript book from the cubbyhole. Edie shuffles along the sofa to make room, patting the spot between her and Jack. I squeeze in, jammed between them both, and Edie opens the book. It’s a battered, leather-bound volume that was once blue but has faded to grey.

  ‘There are heaps of songs in here,’ she says.

  ‘Nearly a hundred.’

  ‘How long have you been collecting songs, Fox?’ she asks.

  ‘Ages. I have to write down a song if I haven’t heard it before, otherwise it buzzes around like a mosquito in my brain. My problem isn’t remembering tunes, it’s trying to forget them.’ I shift on the sofa, suddenly self-conscious, and wish the others weren’t here. ‘I always keep an eye out. Or rather an ear, I suppose. Gather up what I find.’

  Edie laughs. ‘You make it sound as if songs simply sprouted like berries on a hedgerow and sat there until you plucked them and popped them into your book.’

  I laugh. I never really envisioned anyone else being interested in my song habit, far less a woman. Yet her enthusiasm appears sincere, and little spots of colour are daubed on each cheek. Jack fidgets and yawns, and George fiddles with the fire. I wish they’d jolly well leave us to it. Edie leafs through the pages, turning them carefully as though each one is a precious, fragile thing. She pauses, running her finger along the last.

  ‘I’ve never heard this one before. It’s the one from this morning?’

  I nod.

  ‘Well, I’ve sung hundreds of folk songs. I even recorded a few—’

  ‘I know. I have some of your recordings.’

  She smiles. ‘Of course you do. Anyway, I’ve not come across this one until today. I don’t know, but I think it’s possible that no one’s collected it before.’

  I have a tingle in my belly; the satisfaction of discovery. Like an anthropologist rummaging through the jungle for lost tribes, I’ve found something ancient, as yet unrecorded and unfixed.

  Edie smiles at me and returns the book. ‘It’s an odd tune. Tugs at one. It’s always nice to have made a find, don’t you think?’

  ‘He’s a clever old thing,’ says Jack. ‘Much brighter than the rest of us. None of us is musical in the least.’

  ‘Mother sang,’ says George.

  No one speaks. I’m suddenly aware of the crackle and spit of logs on the fire. The General stiffens and blinks. Once. Twice. Jack grips Edie’s hand more tightly.

  The silence jangles.

  ‘She sang to me,’ says George, insistent now. ‘And to Jack. And Little Fox.’

  ‘What did she sing?’ I ask and it’s suddenly desperately important that I know.

  George shak
es his head. ‘Can’t remember. I don’t have a head for tunes.’

  It’s splendid to be at home from Cambridge for the long summer vac. Three blissful months at Hartgrove Hall. Most of my pals are staying on in digs for an extra few days to drink and punt but I couldn’t. Today is Mother’s birthday picnic. We hold it every year. Apparently this is what she always chose for her birthday treat – a picnic under the willows by the River Stour. The General would strip off and go for a bracing swim amidst the ducks and the waterweeds, while the rest of us cheered him on from the bank.

  I wonder whether Mother sang to us then and, if so, which songs. I don’t remember any of it, but Jack and George are quite sentimental about the whole thing – as much for the man our father used to be as anything else. Chivers has winkled out an elderly cook from somewhere, and we ask her to make us up a hamper with cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, seedcake – Mother’s favourite, apparently – and a bottle of hock, to which she was also partial. It’s always a jolly afternoon. The General never comes. We invite him with careful politeness and there’s inevitably a dreadful moment when we worry that this will be the one time he accepts but of course he doesn’t.

  George and I check the hamper in the kitchen. It’s stuffed with all the usual goodies and a pound of early cherries, glossy and black. Jack isn’t here. We’re to collect him and Edie from the station at a quarter to one. It’s the first time there’s been anyone other than the three of us. Jack sent us a cable last night: ‘WILL BE ON THE TWELVE FORTY-FIVE STOP BE A SPORT AND PICK ME UP STOP BRINGING EDIE STOP’. He never telephones or writes, he inevitably selects the most expensive form of communication much as he chooses the best wine or cut of beef on the menu. I’m pleased Edie’s coming and don’t mind that he didn’t consult us first. A little too pleased if I’m honest. I can’t tell whether George minds or not.

  George pokes at a pork pie wrapped in wax paper. ‘I’m hungry already.’

  I nudge him away and rewrap the pie.

  I study him surreptitiously. He’s chosen not to find a job and instead has been attempting to fix the most desperate of the damage to the house – it’s a forlorn task, akin to sticking his finger in a dyke, but I’m taken aback by his skill. There’s now a hefty slab of silver oak as a mantelpiece in the great hall, and he’s carved three running foxes into the wood. They’re both crude and beautiful. I found him in the attic, gathering up all the old photographs of the house and estate, scrutinising them for God knows what. He has piles of ancient almanacs and farming magazines in his room – some of them dating from before the First World War. I can’t think what use he can put them to. This morning I watched from my window as he hurried across the lawn, I presumed returning from an early walk, but now I wonder whether instead he’d been out all night. He never talks about pals or girls and I hope he’s happy. I can’t ask. It’s not the sort of thing we do.

  In the distance the church clock chimes the half-hour.

  ‘Shall we?’

  I nod and together we shoulder the hamper into the boot of the car. It’s already hot and my shirt sticks to my back. The ancient and magnificent magnolia tree on the front driveway is still in bloom, the flowers huge and blowzy, with fleshy pink petals – like fat, tarty girls in ball gowns. I’ve always liked it. The General would prefer it chopped into firewood. I pick fallen and browning petals from the car’s paintwork and, somehow unable to discard them, shove them into my pocket.

  ‘Bags I drive,’ I say, leaping into the driver’s seat before George can object.

  I drive too fast because it’s a gorgeous day and I’m filled with happiness at the thought of the picnic and seeing Jack whom I haven’t seen for simply ages. And Edie. I bat her name away and swerve around a pothole. George grips the door but doesn’t tell me to slow down. It’s a ten-minute drive to the station but we make it in eight and I feel a surge of triumph.

  ‘Do you want to go and meet them? I’ll wait with the car,’ says George.

  ‘Righto.’

  I leap out of the car and am jogging onto the platform as their train pulls in, and I wish for a moment that I’d picked some of the cowslips sprouting on the lawn to present to Edie. It dawns on me how daft that is – as if she’s a visiting dignitary or my girl or something – and then they’re here and Jack’s thumping my back and Edie’s standing behind him, leaving space for the effusion of our reunion, and she’s even prettier than I remember in her yellow summer dress and her crooked half-smile and I almost can’t breathe.

  ‘Hello, Fox,’ she says. ‘You can kiss me if you like.’

  I don’t. I glance at my feet and mumble, ‘Hello, Edie. Jolly nice to see you.’

  We return to the car and to my exasperation I see that George has nipped into the driver’s seat. Sneaky so and so. Jack and Edie climb into the back and, as we hurtle along the narrow lanes and I glance back, I notice how Edie slithers into Jack as we take each bend. George catches me looking and quickly I turn away.

  We park near a tumbledown mill. George and I heave the basket between us, leaving Jack and Edie to go ahead with the piles of blankets and scout a spot to sit. It’s the first hot day of the year and the ground still has the soft bounce of early summer. The grass is long and thick. A cricket ticks in steady crotchets. The river sloshes in easy curves, gnats misting the surface. Several cows watch us, bored, flicking flies with mucky tails. We halt in a field of dandelions. There are thousands upon thousands of them, constellations of vivid, sickly-yellow flowers. Jack flops down and instantly his shirt is tarnished with pollen.

  Methodically, George unpacks the picnic onto a blanket. Edie tries to help but he waves her away. We eat in lazy silence until there is nothing left, passing the bottle of hock between us. As a concession to Edie we brought glasses but we entirely forget to use them and she doesn’t complain. The hock thrums in my head and I’m still thirsty. We should have brought water to drink in this heat. Jack lies back amongst the dandelions, his hair so gold in the sunlight that the flowers look gaudy beside him.

  ‘Lie here with me,’ he says to Edie but she shakes her head, lolling in the shade of a willow. She’s removed her stockings and I can’t help noticing that her white skin is almost translucent. There is a fine fuzz of pale hair on her legs. Jack reaches over and tickles her foot. He gazes at her with something uncomfortably like adoration. I look away.

  ‘How old would your mother have been today?’ she asks and I’m taken aback. We come here every year on Mother’s birthday but we never speak about her. We eat. We lark about and perhaps take a dip in the river and then we return home. I glance at George and register his surprise but he doesn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Fifty-two,’ he says. ‘She would have been fifty-two.’

  I don’t wish to talk about Mother as that would mean I’d need to pretend to be sad. The sun is too hot and the sky is glazed in a too-flawless blue for sadness. Jack clearly feels the same.

  ‘And how old is your mother?’ he asks Edie, propping himself up on his elbow. ‘And when does she get the pleasure of meeting me?’ he adds, turning it, as he does everything, into a joke.

  Edie smiles and digs in her bag for cigarettes but Jack continues to stare at her. It occurs to me that, beneath the teasing, he’s quite serious. He wants to meet her family, I think. He hasn’t yet and he wants to.

  ‘I’m not telling you how old my mother is, because it shows you how old I am,’ she says archly, plucking a dandelion and flinging it at him.

  He loves her, I decide, but he doesn’t really know her at all. I thought loving someone entailed knowing every little detail about them – but then perhaps that’s not love, merely familiarity. I’d like to be more familiar with Edie, I think, and then, embarrassed, I feel heat rise into my cheeks. That bloody hock. I check my watch – it’s nearly five, we’ve been here for ages.

  ‘I have to go soon,’ I tell the others.

  ‘Whatever for?’ asks
Jack.

  ‘There’s an old bloke nearby who knows a good many songs, apparently. I’ve been invited to tea.’

  Edie leans forward, hugging her knees. ‘Found anything good lately?’

  ‘A few. Mostly around Cambridge but I want to hear the old Dorset songs again. Those are my favourites. Nothing sounds half so pleasant as the songs of home.’

  She studies me for a moment and then asks, ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. Can’t think why the old chap would mind. We should get going, though.’

  As Edie starts to put her stockings back on, Jack sits up and grabs her ankle. ‘Don’t leave me. I shall be bereft without you.’

  She shakes him off. ‘Stop it, Jack, you’re being a pest.’

  He flops back in the grass, unconcerned. ‘Come for a swim first.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I say. ‘We simply don’t have time.’

  —

  Dripping wet from our swim, we hurry across the fields in bare feet. I wonder how it is that Jack invariably gets his own way. It’s a rare and unacknowledged gift. In the pub after several pints we sometimes debate what special power we’d like best and I always thought it would be super to fly, but really I think it would be better to always get my own way.

  ‘Slow down, Fox,’ says Edie. ‘You’re going awfully fast.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  I wait for her to catch up. Her wet hair hangs loose in a plait. I’ve never seen her with her hair down and she appears younger, girlish. Her movements are precise and balletic and she possesses a careful self-constraint as if everything she utters is weighed and measured first. As I’ve got to know her better, I’ve found to my surprise that she’s not quite the absolute stunner I’d imagined. Of course she’s attractive, and in photographs she’s made up to be beautiful. I’ve noticed too that on meeting strangers she always behaves as though she is a lovely woman to whom they ought to be paying court and, somehow, without fail they do.