The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  Time is relative in music. The composer sets a time signature, the number of beats in each bar and a guide to the tempo at which they should be played. Yet every performance is unique, and each lasts for a different amount of time. The conductor guides the orchestra through the piece, dictating the speed of this particular journey through the music. As I raise my arm and the orchestra takes a breath, waiting on the upbeat, I hold time in my hand. Max’s melody blows through us all. It swirls above the heads of the listeners and around the panelled hall. This symphony is a small world and as long as the music plays, we’re all held within it: audience, musicians, singers. As I slow the pace, time expands and shifts. I feel it shudder. Max’s melody is old. I hear the wind on the top of Ringmoor in the dark, and out of a churning void, indistinct, cold and filled with musical dissonance, rises a melody, the shepherd’s song held aloft by a glorious and bright soprano. The world begins with Edie. The hall is awash with light and colour. I’m a magician.

  Her voice falls like spring rain and I want her to understand that I’ve written this part for her. I know what her voice can do, how best to release that sound. She’s been fastened into those silly patriotic songs like cheap costumes, and at last she’s dressed in silk. I see in her face that she knows it too, and as she sings, a pure iridescent sound that reverberates through me, I catch her eye, wide with surprise. Listen to what you can do, I tell her through the music. Listen. You are the nightingale but not the one they think.

  I don’t notice the applause. I only hear time restart. We’re no longer suspended within the music and for a minute I’m adrift, uneasy.

  ‘Hello.’ A small hand slides into mine, and I hold it tight. I’m steady again. ‘Bow,’ she whispers.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say to her. ‘Thank you.’ I squeeze her hand. This time she doesn’t let go.

  —

  We persuade the audience outside into the damp air. The rain has petered out into a light drizzle that wraps around the hill. Pads of cloud squat on the ridge, turning it into a soft mountain. This part of the evening was George’s idea. I worry that George is turning into a bit of a green man. At least tonight he’s wearing his clothes. We lead the concert-goers across the sodden lawns to the orchard. I can hear irritated huffs from the ladies in their smart shoes as they sink into sucking mud. Fingers of mist probe the bare trees. George moves to the front of the crowd. This is his idea, so I insist that he introduce it. He clears his throat and shifts from foot to foot, awkward and unable to look directly at the throng.

  ‘We’re bringing back an old custom tonight. We’re going to wassail the apple trees for a good harvest next year. Max, if you would.’

  The shepherd, dressed up for the occasion in a borrowed suit, slides out from amongst the trees. He didn’t want to sing but cash banished his reluctance. The audience are torn between amusement and being charmed by the spectacle. Jack passes around cups of cider. Edie slips in beside me, strokes my arm, rests her head on my shoulder.

  ‘This is fun,’ she says. ‘It’s nice just to listen.’

  ‘And now at least we can drink.’

  We toast but I’m clumsy and I slop cider all over her glove, soaking her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘It doesn’t matter a bit.’ She peels off her glove and something catches in the beam of a torch. There’s a ring on her finger. I grab her hand.

  ‘You’re wearing a wedding ring.’

  She recoils, holding her hand to her chest. ‘Yes. We were married this afternoon. Neither of us wanted any fuss.’

  I’m a fool. An absolute fool. It’s a moment before I can speak.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Edie. When were you going to tell me? Does George know? Does Father?’

  I fire questions at her as she twists her finger, fiddles with her ring. She doesn’t look at me.

  ‘We haven’t told your father. Jack, well, he thought it was best to tell him after the event. We didn’t want any further unpleasantness.’

  She pauses and meets my gaze for a moment, silently asking me to understand. Sweaty with anger, I look away. She gives a tiny sigh and continues, her voice pleading.

  ‘Jack wanted to tell you himself. He’ll be dreadfully upset you found out like this.’

  ‘Christ.’

  Jack hasn’t told me in order to spare my feelings, since he knows perfectly well how I feel about Edie. I’m both desolate and utterly mortified. Edie reaches out to touch my sleeve but I pull away.

  ‘Don’t.’

  I can’t bear her pity. I walk away through the trees. I think I might be sick. Behind me I hear Max’s voice rising through the dark and Edie softly calling.

  I’m dazed with cider and misery. I can’t stay here, that much I know. I can’t see them together. Happy at the breakfast table. Happy in the garden, reading the morning papers. Each of them watching me with that awful blend of pity and concern.

  Hurriedly, I go back to the house where I unearth a suitcase and fill it with my manuscript pages, then pack the book containing the folk songs I’ve collected. I’m about to leave when I realise that I might need some clothes and a razor and such. Gathering them as quickly as I can, I toss my belongings into the car. I help myself to a bottle of burgundy from the cellar and a little petty cash, and I walk out onto the driveway. The first guests are leaving now, drifting in twos and threes into the night. I hear singing and laughter from the orchard.

  I start the car and drive away. The suitcase rattles and bounces. I wind down the window and take a long swig of burgundy. I don’t know where I’m going. The freedom of this thought is a relief and I take another hit of wine. I shall drive and drive. The air is cool. I shall find somewhere quiet and write. Exhilaration surges, then falls. Nothing can compensate for what I’ve lost. Except that she was never mine to lose.

  March 2001

  It had been a year since Edie died. Statistics suggested that I should have been grateful that I’d made it through at all – many of the bereaved die within the first few months and since I had survived for a year my own death was supposedly not imminent. On the other hand, the fact that my body had decided to continue did not mean my life would suddenly become easier.

  For the first year Clara and Lucy rallied around me. Our lives orbited the void Edie’s absence had created, that black hole at the centre of our universe. Yet piece by piece my daughters inched back into their ordinary routines. There were setbacks. Clara telephoned a week before Edie’s birthday, distraught that she’d purchased a card for her, remembering only once outside the shop that it was horribly unnecessary. I told her to write the card and post it to me. I received it and dutifully informed Clara that it was very touching, but the truth was that I couldn’t bear to open it at all. I shoved it into Edie’s bedside drawer where it sat with her spectacle case and the last, never-to-be-finished novel she’d been reading when she died, none of them to be opened again.

  I understood that the girls’ loss was different from mine. Their sudden tsunamis of grief were brought on by the realisation that for a minute or an hour or even half a day they had not thought about Edie. They’d been caught up in everyday life – buying chops for supper or attending a school parents’ evening – and had briefly forgotten that their mother was dead. This was as it should be. We cannot be so utterly desolate at the death of a parent that we are unable to continue with our own lives and those of our children. If we did, then the human race would cease pretty sharpish. I watched them slip back into the rhythms of their busy lives with regret but also with relief.

  It was not the same for me. Edie and I had been married for too long and were too much part of one another’s worlds. We were trees with a shared canopy, grown and shaped to fit one another. When one tree is lost in a storm, the other remains, ugly and distorted. I lingered at the edge of things, an observer, never quite managing properly to engage in any conversation.

 
To my immense sadness, at the end of a year I started to lose that sense of Edie being just around the corner. Until then, I had almost been able to persuade myself that she was making tea in the kitchen or had popped to the loo and was coming back any minute. I missed that magical self-delusion and felt, as each week and month passed, that Edie was sliding further and further away from me. Instead of easing my loss, time increased the distance between us. I tried to accept the grim fact that the best parts of my life were behind me. I now had to be nourished on memories alone, but, treacherous, they slithered away. I retreated into my notebooks, recording thoughts of her – early and late – and also scrutinising my more recent jottings, analysing my own grief.

  It came in waves. Sometimes for hours or even days I’d function perfectly well. Then, something would trigger it. The knowledge of an anniversary – ‘Today a year ago was the last time we walked around the garden together’ – or not leaping to turn off the blasted radio quickly enough before I caught her singing. Then in the sudden silence, grief would catch me and bear me off on grey tides. I was helpless until it receded once more and despair dwindled into ordinary unhappiness.

  I still couldn’t write music. Not a note. I wanted to write Edie her symphony but after a year I had nothing. It had to be a symphony and not a requiem – much too sad, not like Edie at all. She was full of melodies and always reminded me that, as a composer, it was my duty to please the audience as well as myself. She used to sing endless nursery rhymes to the children when they were small. I found most of them horribly tedious but when I dared to complain, Edie wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘I don’t only sing for myself, I sing for my listener, who in this case is three and a half with a sore tummy. She wants “Three Blind Mice”, not Bartók.’

  It was always her Yiddish songs that I wanted to hear. She rarely sang them and when I pressed her, she refused. They reminded her too strongly of her own childhood and of things she preferred to forget. Once, she confessed that soon after the family had arrived from Russia, there were times when they didn’t have enough to eat, and went to bed hungry. If she woke in the night, restless and with an empty stomach, her grandmother would pull Edie into her own bed and sing her songs to fill the hole. Later, Edie’s mother found a job at a bakery, and there were always yesterday’s bagels to eat, even if there wasn’t enough cream cheese or fancy things to put inside them. Occasionally, I overheard her singing them instead of nursery rhymes to soothe the children. I’d sneak in and listen in the doorway, frightened of disturbing her and making her stop. Heard melodies are sweet, but those overheard in stolen snatches, I discovered, are sweeter still.

  I’d wake some mornings with a surge of energy, full of determination: this was the morning I’d start to write Edie’s symphony. I’d shower and as the hot water rushed over me I’d feel a sense of vigour and eagerness. Sometimes I’d scrub it away as I towelled myself dry and would have to sit down on the edge of the bath, already drained, fighting the urge to slink back to bed. Other times my enthusiasm lasted as far as the kitchen, where I’d brew myself a cup of bad coffee, always too weak or too strong – it was Edie who understood the quirks of the rickety coffee maker. I couldn’t do the sensible thing and buy a fancy new espresso machine, the sort Lucy was always marvelling over, because this one was another object that Edie had touched. So, I’d take my revolting coffee to my desk or to the piano and I’d sit ready to start sketching. Here, if it hadn’t already, inspiration invariably left me. I couldn’t settle. The house was too quiet.

  Edie’s study door was open across the hall. I never closed it. For forty years we’d popped in and out to chat, to listen to an idea, to agree it was time for lunch – a cheese sandwich or should we treat ourselves and go to the pub? I rarely ventured inside her study any more. Her desk was exactly as she’d left it. I had Mrs Stroud dust it every week but I forbade her from tidying. Edie hated to have anyone touch the things on her desk. It was always a terrible mess – I couldn’t have borne to work in such chaos – but Edie maintained everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. The open door taunted me. It signalled that everything was all right, when I knew perfectly well that it was not. I’d wonder whether I ought to close it, and with that any tentative inspiration I might have had inevitably fled.

  The only time my imagination was teeming with music was when Robin came to the house to play the piano. Those days were circled in red on the calendar and in my mind. Perhaps it was because of those red days that I didn’t die of a stroke or flu or any of the ailments of the bereaved, but found myself waking three mornings a week with a thrill of impatience. Robin came around to practise on Saturdays, Sunday afternoons and Wednesday evenings.

  We’d agreed that for the time being it remained best that Robin used my Steinway rather than our purchasing a piano for him to have at home. Clara still fretted that if there was a piano in the house Robin would do nothing but play it. It was already enough of a struggle to deliver him to school on the days each week when he attended.

  Family life now revolved around him. On Mondays, Clara and Robin would drive up to the Royal College of Music in Marylebone, leaving Dorset at five in the morning (the only time that Robin did not object with fury to getting out of bed was when he knew it meant piano lessons). Clara and Robin would spend the night in London and not return until nearly eleven o’clock on Tuesday evenings. On Fridays, Clara and Robin would rise again at dawn and drive to London and back before lunch. During the days each week that their mother was in town, Ralph would take the girls to school, where they had to stay late until he could collect them after work.

  The schedule was exhausting for the entire family. Katy was not doing as well at school as she had been, and her teachers worried that no one was supervising her homework. Despite Robin’s rages and passionate objection, I think Clara was probably correct in forbidding the presence of a piano in their house. On the nights when Robin stayed with me, I’d discover him playing at three in the morning until I was forced to lock the music-room door before I went to bed.

  One Sunday I had been anticipating his arrival with considerable pleasure. I’d purchased his preferred brand of chocolate biscuits and was looking forward to hearing the Brahms again. He arrived in a flurry of noise, hurling himself through the kitchen door, yelling somewhat unnecessarily, ‘Grandpa, I’m here! I’m here!’

  Clara looked worn out. She sat down in the kitchen and reached for the teapot. I noticed that there were stripes of grey in her hair and, seeing me look, she ran her hand through it self-consciously.

  ‘I know, my hair is dreadful. I never seem to have time to get it done any more.’

  ‘I brought you something,’ said Robin, profoundly uninterested in his mother’s personal regime, thrusting a tatty piece of paper at me.

  It was a splodge drawing. I squinted. Robin sighed and rolled his eyes.

  ‘It’s you playing the piano,’ he said, clearly exasperated at my stupidity.

  ‘So it is. It’s wonderful,’ I said.

  It wasn’t. The figure was crude and barely recognisable as a person, but we’d been told to praise Robin when he showed interest in anything other than the piano. His school wanted to encourage balance and if possible to dampen his enthusiasm for music. It seemed a futile task to me, akin to trying to empty a pond with a teaspoon during a rainstorm, but I’m only a grandparent and so I did as I was told.

  ‘I’ll come back early today. To give you time to get ready,’ said Clara.

  ‘Ready for what, darling?’

  She frowned and looked concerned. ‘This afternoon is Mummy’s stone setting. Did you forget?’

  ‘No. I hadn’t forgotten. I’m not going.’

  Clara looked aghast, as though I’d finally lost it. I had forgotten, or rather I’d successfully put it out of my mind.

  ‘You go, if you want. I’ll stay here and mind Robin. He won’t want to go and he’ll have much more fun
playing music with me.’

  ‘Yes. Please. That,’ agreed Robin.

  Clara continued to stare at me with the same appalled expression. ‘Robin, go and play for a minute. I need to talk to Grandpa.’

  Robin shrugged and disappeared at a run. Twenty seconds later the sound of ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ came cascading along the hall.

  ‘Papa, how can you not go to Mummy’s stone setting? I don’t understand.’

  I shifted unhappily on my chair. I wondered whether sons were easier than daughters who constantly demanded explanations and needed to be told in unpleasant intimate detail the minutiae of one’s feelings.

  ‘I don’t wish to go. It’s a religious ceremony. They make me uncomfortable and listening to a stranger recite prayers in a foreign language has nothing to do with the woman I knew and loved. She wanted prayers and all those knick-knacks. But it has nothing in the least to do with me.’

  I sounded angrier than I intended.

  ‘You’re really not going?’ Clara’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘No, darling. I’m not. I’m sorry to upset you.’

  ‘It’s what Mummy wanted.’

  ‘Yes. But it’s not what I wanted. And I’m the one still here.’

  I started to clatter cups in the sink to signal that I didn’t wish to discuss the matter any longer. Clara gathered herself. ‘All right. Very well. I’ll leave Robin here with you then. We’ll pick him up afterwards.’

  I watched her leave, aware that I’d disappointed her, but I was unable to behave as she wished me to. While Edie was alive she always acted as a buffer between the girls and me, persuading them to leave me to sail my own ship, not to make too many demands, especially those that might interfere with my music. After she died, the girls stole closer like players in a game of ‘Grandmother’s Footsteps’ and while I often took solace in the intimacy, wondering why I’d kept them at a careful distance for so long, at other times I wished they’d allow me some privacy. A man doesn’t always wish to discuss his marriage with his daughters.