The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘All right,’ I say, ‘I won’t.’

  He closes his eyes and starts to sing. He calls to the wind and curses the rain and the sky and the cruelty of fate that leaves him out on the bare hillside while rich men snooze by their fires. His voice shakes with fervour, and there’s an anger, raw and fierce, and he is both the singer and the song. This isn’t a sentimental lament ruing some idealised past but a personal cry. The sound, which seems to grow from the soil itself, is somehow familiar, as though I’ve heard it before and forgotten. I want to catch hold of it, to fix this moment, and then he stops and it’s lost, but so am I.

  ‘Come back in the snow, and I’ll sing yer another,’ says Max, laughing, pleased at the effect his singing has had on me and I nod, dazed as a drunken man.

  I stumble down the hill, ears ringing with music, both remembered and remade, as Max’s melody starts to re-thread its way into another piece, something symphonic, a shout of horns and then the shrill of a flute. It comes to me with a mixture of wonder and relief. I swear I hear a trumpet blasting brightly through the woods. The pleasure is rich and dark. It’s almost as I imagined sex would be. I’ve an idea at last and I think it might be something. I shout at the heather with great whoops of joy. I’ve boasted to girls in Cambridge bars that I’m a song collector and a composer when I’ve never written anything other than the odd ditty to amuse my brothers – the musical equivalent of a dirty limerick, not exactly a great symphonic work. But, oh God, this is different.

  I shudder. Max’s melody moves through me like a pulse, already changing into something else. It has the heart of the shepherd’s tune but it catches in the wind and is blown wide. There’s a ripple of harps and beneath that a syncopated rumble of strings like river water moving through reeds.

  I need to write it down. I run.

  I don’t see Jack and George until I nearly bash into them. Jack grabs my arm.

  ‘Steady on,’ he says. ‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’

  I shake him off, angry, not taking in the fact that George has returned. ‘I have to write,’ I say and walk away.

  ‘You can’t,’ he says. ‘You have to wait.’

  ‘Listen,’ says George, and I want to tell him that I can’t listen, my head is too full of music, there’s a crowd in there and there simply isn’t room for anyone else.

  ‘Five minutes,’ says George.

  ‘Please,’ says Jack.

  —

  We sit at the edge of the lake. Willows dip their fronds into the water like girls washing their hair. It’s cold and a fine film of rain starts to fall but we stay right where we are.

  ‘It’s possible we can save the house,’ says George. ‘We’ll certainly have to sell a couple of the larger farms but we must be careful not to sell too much acreage. I’ve done all the sums. We’ll work on the land – all three of us. We can’t afford to employ more than one or two other chaps to help. After Canning goes we can’t possibly afford a new estate manager so we’ll have to do that ourselves. And then we might make the thing work. I talked it through with Canning and he agrees it’s possible. Unlikely but possible.’

  Canning has never been unfairly accused of being an optimist. If he concedes that it’s possible, it must be true. I allow myself to hope. I’ll have to change the music. The first movement won’t be so dirgelike. There’ll need to be something greener in the strings. Instead of a symphonic lament, it will be a portrait of a great house and her family. The melody will be fragmented at the start, and then gradually piece together, a section at a time.

  Jack stretches out his legs, kicking idly at a log. ‘It’s all right for me. I don’t really know what else to do. I’m brilliantly inept at most things. I’m far too stupid for the law and too ungodly for the Church. I think farming will suit me.’

  Silently I agree. Most things suit Jack.

  ‘What does Father say?’

  Jack grimaces.

  ‘We haven’t spoken to him yet. We’ll do it together.’

  This has always been the agreement. We approach the General united. No matter who broke the greenhouse window with the cricket ball, or dared me to jump off the barn roof so that I broke my arm; even when Jack decided to leave Cambridge after a term, we all faced the General as a battalion. George skims a pebble over the smooth surface of the lake. It bounces half a dozen times and sinks.

  ‘You understand what this means, Fox? You’ll have to come down from Cambridge. We need you here. We’ll all have to work here. It’ll be jolly hard. Bloody. There won’t be time for anything else.’

  I can’t meet George’s eye. I say nothing. I understand perfectly, better than George does. It means there will be no time for music. They’re asking me to choose the life of a farmer instead of that of a musician. He can’t understand the cost of what he’s asking. I’ve the idea for my first real symphony, something grand and orchestral, and they tell me there is no time for music.

  My brothers are watching me and I know they’re bewildered by my silence, my lack of enthusiasm. They want only to save the house. They want nothing else. I see the roof of Turnworth House rise and linger in the air for a moment that stretches and then breaks.

  Max’s song buzzes in my ears. I’ve not written it down yet and a headache in shades of purple and white is building behind my eyes.

  ‘And what about Edie?’ I ask. I want them to stop scrutinising me with leery disappointment.

  Jack colours, a real hot pink. ‘We’re getting married,’ he says. ‘She’s putting up her money to help save the house. I said I’d let her only if she agreed to marry me.’

  And the axe falls. It was always going to but, as it does, I’m winded, as breathless as if Jack had slammed into me full force. I lie back on the wet ground, feeling the earth ooze beneath my fingers.

  ‘Of course I’m game,’ I say. Not because I care more about the house now it’s to be Edie’s home too, but because nothing matters at all.

  The melody in my head changes key again. The green in the strings fades to grey.

  They slap my shoulders and holler, and I somehow remember to congratulate Jack, but I’m perfectly numb and weightless. As their shouts bounce across the lake like George’s skimmed stones, the drizzle thickens into rain, dimpling the surface of the water.

  Chivers summons us into the study, where he lingers behind the General’s chair. He’s promised to put in a good word. I watch the two of them as Jack talks. They’re perfectly at ease together. This union has been happier and longer-lived than most marriages. It’s certainly lasted longer than my father’s marriage to my mother.

  ‘And you all agree?’ says the General. ‘Even you, Little Fox? Always thought you’d do something with music or whatnot. You seem an unlikely farmer. More unlikely than the others, if that’s possible.’

  I’m taken aback by his solicitation. I nod. ‘I want to save the house, Father. I’m needed here.’

  ‘We do need him, if we’re to have a hope,’ says George.

  ‘And what does Canning say?’

  ‘He believes it is indeed possible, Father. He’s hopeful.’

  We are careful not to upgrade the dour Mr Canning’s declaration too far into optimism or it will cease to be believable.

  ‘Harrumph,’ says the General, or at least that is what I think he says. It’s possible he’s merely clearing his throat.

  ‘Will you at least think on it, Father?’ asks Jack.

  ‘This house, this land, it belongs to all of us,’ says George, veering dangerously from the script.

  The General looks up sharply and settles on George with a grim expression, close to dislike.

  ‘No it doesn’t. Don’t think that for a moment. It belongs in its entirety to me. And, if there is anything left to inherit, it will pass in its entirety to Jack. And, when he has a son, it will go to him.’

  George shakes
slightly and there is a tiny tic in the corner of his left eye, but then he swallows. ‘My apologies, sir. I misspoke.’

  Are George and I quite superfluous to him? Jack is his heir and we are merely insurance policies. The light catches the gold of the General’s watch. I can’t believe it of him. It’s cold in the study. The General never allows a fire to be lit in his room in the afternoon. Warmth breeds softness in a man. And softness, like buggery after Eton, is a sin.

  We are dismissed. Chivers opens the door for us, and we retreat to the frigid drawing room, as men are supposed to do, instead of to the cosiness of the kitchen, not wishing to invoke the General’s disapproval today at least. We sit. We fidget. I try to write but I’m restless and unhappy and that sense of glorious certainty has dissipated like sunshine into rain. Jack smokes. My jealousy of him ebbs momentarily as I wonder vaguely about how the General will react to the news of the new lady of Hartgrove being a singer and an entertainer. Perhaps her fame will ease the shame.

  Days come and go. The General gives us no answer. Chivers remains perfectly inscrutable and offers no indication one way or the other. Early one morning I find George burning the corpses of half a dozen rabbits beside the stables.

  ‘It’s a sacrifice,’ he says before I even have a chance to ask. ‘Highland fellow in my regiment told me it’s what they do up north. A great house must have a great sacrifice. Thought it was worth a go.’

  I cough, spluttering on the stink of burning fur. ‘Rabbits? Not much of a sacrifice, though, are they? Stringy little things.’

  George looks worried. ‘Blast it. You’re probably right. I should find something bigger. A deer should do it.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ I tell him. ‘If you shoot venison and burn it rather than serving it up to the General, you’ll be hindering our cause, not helping it.’

  He gives a rueful smile. ‘I suppose you’re right. Anyway, the old ways of Scotland probably don’t hold much sway across the border.’

  I make no further comment but study George with some concern. I’m sure that, before the army, he smiled more. At night, I hear him walking up and down in his room above mine, his footsteps creaking along the floorboards.

  I wonder whether I should leave. Find somewhere quiet and with a decent piano where I can try to write while I still can. Then Edie arrives back at the Hall and I’m stuck in quicksand.

  I make notes for my composition but I can’t even get a fix on the main theme. I need a piano to try it out on but the one in the drawing room has finally surrendered to the damp. When I sit down to play, a dozen keys ping off as my fingers touch them and spray onto the floor like an old woman spitting out a mouthful of loose teeth. Disgusted, I close the lid. I’m reduced to sitting at the piano and trying to work through the melody by tapping it out on the lid but it’s quite hopeless. I take a cigarette from Jack and watch from the window as the rain moves across the hills.

  ‘Do either of you know the least thing about farming?’ I ask.

  ‘The least thing,’ says Jack. ‘But I have an unwavering belief in myself.’

  ‘George?’

  ‘I thought I might take a course,’ he says, emerging from his seed catalogue. ‘And I remember some things.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I say. And I wonder whether perhaps it would be for the best if the General rejects our plan and the old gal is put out of her misery quickly with a touch of dynamite.

  I’m tired. Ghosts of the melodies rush through my dreams, but when I wake and try to pin them on the page, they’ve gone again. Instead of sleeping, I lie awake and think of Edie. It’s a terrible thing to covet your brother’s girl. I suppose the only thing worse is to covet your brother’s wife. They have not said when they will marry and I do not ask. I tell myself that it will be on some distant date and the wedding may, in fact, never even take place. I try not to watch her, but she’s my compass point. When she’s in the room, I know where she is and what she’s doing – finding a record for the ancient gramophone, hunting for her spectacles so she can sit at the bureau and answer letters.

  She sees me fumbling a tune on the piano lid.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  I open the piano and show her the ruined instrument.

  She sighs. ‘What a pity. She must have been a beauty once.’

  I’m struck with nostalgia. Edie’s right, this piano was young once and couples danced to her music. It’s not the piano’s fault that she decayed in this damp and mouldering house. I’m frightened that, if I stay, I’ll end up like the piano.

  ‘What are you trying to play?’ she asks.

  Instinctively, I clutch the manuscript pages to my chest. I can’t bear for anyone to look until I’m finished but Edie prises them from my grasp.

  ‘It’s the main theme for the orchestral piece I’m sketching. I can’t get the phrasing right. I just can’t hear it.’

  ‘Give me a C.’

  I hum it for her and then she sings carefully through the melody. At once I hear the error.

  ‘Wait a tick.’

  I mark in the changes.

  ‘Try now.’

  She sings again, and I feel a flutter in my chest. Yes.

  ‘That’s it.’

  I’m taken aback by how good it sounds.

  ‘It’s peculiar, plaintive and yet it sticks with you. I rather like it. Reminds me a bit of Butterworth but it’s different,’ says Edie.

  As the others chatter, I withdraw to the chill of the morning room to write. Now, I hear her voice singing the melody and I start to work in earnest.

  In the coming days I alternate between writing music and pining for Edie, listening with some resentment to Jack’s cheerful complaints about the endless summer rain. I think I would be less miserable about her, I decide, if I wasn’t still a virgin. I really ought to drown my sorrows in other women. Cambridge is full of women who’re broad-minded about sex. Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never actually met such a woman in Cambridge and now, I suppose, utterly depressed, I never will.

  Coming into the drawing room, I look out to see that Hartgrove Hill has vanished entirely into the mist but I still feel its pull. Anyone born in its shadow is caught, so they say. I know that during the war years, when I was away at school surrounded by the pretty orderliness of Windsor town, I found myself walking the Ridgeway at night. I wonder whether Jack and George dreamed of it while in Egypt or Poland.

  I turn away and sit beside George who stares fixedly at a guide to soil types.

  The door opens. The General appears.

  ‘A decision has been made,’ he announces as though it were from a committee of twelve rather than himself. We rise like prisoners awaiting sentence.

  ‘You have one year to run the estate.’

  George splutters in rage. ‘One year? Quite impossible. How can we repair a generation of neglect in a single year? You might as well blow up the damn place right away.’

  ‘Well, if that’s what you prefer,’ replies the General coolly. ‘Otherwise you may have a year. The decision is Jack’s. It’s his inheritance.’

  Jack glances at George, silently urging him to contain his fury. ‘We’ll take the year, Father.’

  Our father turns to look at me. He studies me with quiet interest. ‘And you, Little Fox? You really want to be part of this scheme?’

  I feel my brothers watching me. I swallow, feeling cold patches of sweat bloom beneath my shirt. ‘Yes, sir. I do.’

  So this is it then. It’s to be the house rather than music. I’m terribly glad and desperately miserable all at once. I wonder whether I shall ever finish my symphony. With a pang, I realise I really shall miss my Cambridge chums. They’re decent sorts and one or two of them are decent enough musicians. Perhaps one day I’ll tempt them down to wassail the hedgerows.

  ‘Well then.’ The General checks his watch. ‘Time to dress for dinner.�
�

  We haven’t dressed for dinner since the war but no sooner is the General out of the room than a gong booms through the house. I’d forgotten all about it. In the years before the war that gong governed us all. Several evenings each week during the school holidays I was permitted to dine downstairs. The dampening effect of the General’s presence ensured it was a rather subdued affair but I always looked forward to it on account of the dining-room puddings – infinitely better than those served in the nursery. The gong calls again, at once deep and bright, reverberating through the hall, up the stairs and through the attics until I see its sound flying out of the chimney in a volley of crimson sparks. We are here. We are awakened, it cries. I see in the shining faces of my brothers that they believe in its music. I smile and hope for their sakes.

  —

  Dinner is jollier than I’d expected. Three of Edie’s friends arrive by train and Chivers is forced to re-lay the table for eight. I think they’ve had a drop of grog in the dining car on the way down, as they arrive pink-cheeked and giggling.

  ‘This is Josie, Betty and Sal,’ says Edie, pulling them into the blue drawing room, her arm linked through theirs, a paper chain of girls. They glance about them, ogling the ornate cornicing, the tattered blue silk wallpaper, the plaster birds in flight across the improbably high ceiling. Despite the decay, nothing can hide the elegant proportions of the room, the pleasing symmetry. The floorboards are oak, broad, thick and ancient.

  ‘Delighted to meet you all,’ says Jack, kissing each of them on the cheek and making them giggle louder still.

  ‘Yes, quite,’ says the General, not looking delighted in the least.

  George blinks, nods and retreats to the fire, which to my relief has been lit. The smell of smoking logs now wars with the pervasive odour of damp.

  Edie catches my hand and draws me to the trio of girls – their hair is the exact same shade of blonde. As they continue to tremble with laughter, they remind me of a clump of shaking yellow daffodils.

  ‘And this is Little Fox, whom I’ve been telling you about,’ she says with a smile.