The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  Wearily, I trailed across the hall to the music room. I lingered in the doorway watching Robin, feeling my spirits lift. With utter focus he was playing a Schubert sonata in G major. His eyes were almost closed and, although the music was open on the stand, he did not so much as glance at it. His teacher had suggested that he should see whether he could learn the music by heart, explaining that just as actors don’t walk around on the stage or on television shows holding their scripts but learn their parts, so musicians need to do the same. It’s only when one has memorised a piece that one can disappear into it, understand the music from the inside.

  I watched Robin as much as listened to him. It was apparent from his posture that he was wholly within the music; the piano was an extension of his body. His shoulders swayed and rolled with a dancer’s grace, his fingers running over the keys. His immersion was an intensely personal thing, and I felt I was an intruder. At the end of the piece, he opened his eyes and, noticing me, grinned.

  ‘I like that one,’ he said. ‘It feels nice under my fingers.’

  ‘It feels nice in my ears, listening to it,’ I said. ‘You’re getting better.’

  ‘Good.’ He stretched like a cat. ‘I’m going to play the piano for, like, I dunno, ten years.’

  I smiled. Ten years, to a five-year-old, was akin to for ever. I sat at my desk and listened to his practice. It was no longer my task to offer a critique. While he played I never did anything other than listen. I did not answer the phone nor drink a cup of tea nor read letters nor turn on the computer. My attention belonged wholly to Robin.

  Yet on that Sunday, I found my thoughts straying to Edie. I was distracted by thoughts of the stone setting. I’d never been to one and I didn’t know how to picture it. I’d never been to a Jewish funeral before Edie’s. I certainly hadn’t expected that the first Jewish funeral I attended would be my wife’s. When Edie started visiting the synagogue, she didn’t tell me. If I’m being quite honest, mostly I forgot that she was Jewish. When I had to fill in one of those bureaucratic tick-box forms, I’d mark ‘White, British’ without a thought. On one of our trips shortly after I’d had a cataract operation and couldn’t see terribly well, Edie had filled in the form. I noticed that beside the box asking for ‘ethnicity’ she’d ticked ‘Other’ beside her name and had written ‘Jewish’ next to it. That was probably the only time I gave it a second thought. She was just Edie.

  Neither of us had much time for God. No, that’s not quite true – I didn’t have much time for God and I simply presumed Edie felt the same. The first I knew about the synagogue trips was a few months before she died, when a rabbi came to the house and rang the bell. When I opened the door and saw the man in the tall hat and the black coat, I thought he was from some sort of cult and was either going to try to convert me or sell me dictionaries.

  I said, ‘Not today, thank you,’ and he said quietly, ‘I’m here to see Edie. Edie Rose.’

  That had startled me. Edie hadn’t been ‘Edie Rose’, except on CD covers and in tribute concerts, for forty years. She was Mrs Edie Fox-Talbot.

  Edie never publicly discussed her Jewishness. Yet all our Jewish friends seemed to know without being told. I remembered a dinner with Albert and his wife thirty years ago. We probably served them sausage cassoulet. Even Edie ate pork after we were married and, truthfully, it would never have occurred to me that it might be tactless to serve pig to Albert and Margot. They were contemplating a trip back to Berlin. Albert had been asked to perform and was inclined to go, but Margot was appalled at the thought of returning. Albert turned to Edie and solicited her opinion.

  ‘Would you go back? Have you been back to Russia?’

  Slowly, she shook her head. ‘No. I’ve not been back. I’m not sure I would go. I was so young when we left. And, suppose, you know. Suppose it still felt like home? What would I do then?’

  I’d looked at her, aghast. All this shared life, and yet a part of her still hankered after something else. I’d made light of it then, silently resolving never to accept a job to conduct in Moscow, and wondered aloud, ‘How did you know Edie was Jewish? Do you chaps have a secret handshake like the Masons?’

  The three of them stared at me as though I were drunk or mad or both.

  ‘Of course she’s Jewish,’ Albert had said with a shrug, and total assurance. I’d felt that they were all quietly laughing at me, and it was an uncomfortable sensation being the odd man out.

  Sometimes, in later years when she agreed to the occasional interview, a piece might mention her Russian ancestry and the fact that she was ‘of Jewish descent’ – a vague phrase; after all, most of us possess a dash of something or other in our genes. Yet, after she died, every single obituary stated that she was Jewish as though everyone had always known, which was utter guff. I liked the piece in The Guardian the best. The headline was ‘England’s Winter Rose Dies’. Edie would have rather liked that.

  I’d been disconcerted when the rabbi had appeared on the doorstep, and in all honesty I’d not been thrilled to discover that she’d been making trips to the synagogue. Even after I found out, I never went with her. I don’t know whether I would have gone if she’d asked, but then she never did. I wasn’t pleased about Edie returning to her Jewish roots. We were to be parted by death, and I thought that was a sufficient division. I resented the further separation. I didn’t want her to be buried in a cemetery in a grotty suburb of Bournemouth miles from where we’d spent our lives together. George was comfortable in his spot in the woods. I fully expected to lie beside him at some point, and I’d always presumed Edie would be there too. I wanted to think of her on the hillside amongst the snowdrops or trudging through the bluebell woods, not lying in a box surrounded by strangers and the hum of traffic on the roundabout near Ikea.

  After her funeral, I swore I would not go back to the cemetery. She might want to be buried there but I did not have to visit. I preferred to remember her in my own way. I could not understand why after all this time together that at the very end she’d insisted on turning away from me.

  ‘What do you think, Grandpa?’ asked Robin and I realised with some surprise that I hadn’t heard a single note.

  ‘Play it again,’ I said.

  Happily, he returned to the keyboard and with a struggle, like closing an overfull suitcase, I pushed all thoughts of Edie from my mind.

  —

  Later in the afternoon we listened to CDs. I might not have been able to teach Robin the piano but I was still permitted to further his musical education.

  We had a pleasant routine. Robin built himself a nest of cushions on the Persian rug and wriggled in amongst them. He always asked for the heavy damask curtains to be closed: he liked to transform the music room into an auditorium. I had to introduce the programme giving the title of the piece. I flashed the electric lights to signal the programme was about to start and Robin dutifully applauded the imaginary conductor while I pressed ‘play’ on the first track. I’d invested in better speakers; one of the sound engineers I’d worked with on my last couple of albums had come to the house and put it all together. It sounded simply marvellous – akin to sitting right in the centre of the stalls. Whether it was in imitation of me or because he felt the same, Robin refused any snack or refreshment while the music played. Instead, we had an interval after the first piece where we’d both eat chocolate biscuits and I’d have a cup of tea and Robin some milk while we discussed the performance with great earnestness.

  For the concert that Sunday I’d selected Delius’s On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring. I enjoyed observing Robin as he listened. He sat amongst his cushions, never once slouching, always alert and taut with concentration. He reminded me of a hare I once saw in the snow on the Ridgeway, its long ears upright, perfectly still, every atom poised as it listened for the tiniest sound across the snowfield. When the Delius ended, we both clapped politely.

  ‘Well, what did you thi
nk?’ I asked, turning on the lights.

  This was our routine. I liked to know Robin’s thoughts before I gave him the précis about the piece. He needed first to learn his own mind and feelings.

  ‘Shivery,’ said Robin.

  He’d had a cold a couple of weeks before and had learned that the word elicited almost instant sympathy from his mother and sisters.

  ‘All right. Why?’

  Robin screwed up his face. He didn’t enjoy having to put into words how music made him feel.

  ‘Try to tell me. And then I’m going to make milkshakes.’

  Robin gave an elaborate sigh. ‘It’s shivery like when I get out of the bath at your house.’

  The radiator in the bathroom that the grandchildren used didn’t work very well and it was always a good idea to hop in and out of the bath at speed, dressing and undressing smartly.

  ‘The music sounds cold?’

  ‘That’s what I said, Grandpa. Shivery.’ Robin fidgeted and huffed. The moment the music ended, so did his miraculous concentration. He started to pick at a loose thread on the cushion cover.

  ‘I think you’re quite right,’ I said, trying to engage him. ‘The music does sound cold. It’s about the first cuckoo in spring but it’s very early spring and still chilly. It makes me think of green things shooting.’

  I opened my desk drawer, pulled out a typed sheet of paper and handed it to him.

  ‘Here. These are the programme notes for today’s music-room concert. I thought you might like them to be typed up like at a real concert.’

  Robin took them from me and stared at the piece of paper reverently, even though he couldn’t read it. He glanced up at me with a look of mild reproach. ‘Grandpa, if it’s a proper concert you have to give me the programme at the beginning and I have to pay money for it and it has to be folded and not like that.’

  He flapped the single sheet at me.

  ‘I’ll give it to you at the start next time. And you can pay me a penny.’

  ‘A pound or it isn’t real.’

  ‘A pound for the subscription for the whole concert series.’

  He looked dubious.

  ‘I’m giving you a special rate because you’re an excellent customer and come to all the concerts,’ I explained. ‘It’s what the proper concert halls do.’

  He stared at me for a moment, blue eyes big with suspicion, and then acquiesced with a nod.

  We traipsed along the passage to the kitchen to make milkshakes. The kitchen was rather old-fashioned with green Formica work surfaces rather than the modern taste for granite or marble, and I’d kept the ancient range even though it didn’t work. We sat at the oak table, scrubbed white over the years, and drank banana milkshakes, Robin slurping his happily through a curly straw. The piano had curbed some of his naughtiness. However, if, God forbid, a lesson was cancelled or he couldn’t practise during his allotted time, the entire family suffered. His tantrums were Wagnerian and lasted nearly as long as the entire Ring cycle.

  He watched me over the top of his glass, blowing bubbles with his straw. I didn’t want him to spend the whole day in the music room with the curtains drawn. Boys also require dirt and fresh air. I feared the consequences of suggesting such a thing but I would not be a coward in small matters. My father had instilled in us as children a deep-rooted fear of being what he termed ‘a drip’. It was a sin and a failing so hideous that for some years I had believed it to be a fatal and infectious disease that one could stave off only through cold baths, tedious walks in the rain and endless evenings without the respite of a fire.

  ‘Robin, at the end of the concert we shall go for a walk. We can take the fishing nets down to the river and hunt for tadpoles.’

  ‘Are they slimy?’

  ‘Absolutely. Covered in the stuff. Perfectly disgusting.’

  ‘OK, I’ll come.’

  ‘Oh. Good,’ I said, relieved.

  —

  After the second part of our concert – Mahler – we put on wellingtons and waterproofs and strolled down to the river. I felt a little guilty about the Mahler; it seemed adult and inappropriate – as if I’d shown him a film containing love-making – but his teacher had apparently mentioned Mahler’s piano quartet and, not having a recording of that, I’d ended up playing him Mahler’s Fifth. He’d sat, rapt as ever, and afterwards didn’t seem any the worse for it.

  The grass was slick with dew and a flush of yellow celandine had unfurled in the spring sunshine, speckling the ground beneath the willows and blackthorn in the wild part of the garden. Daffodils and narcissi bobbed in the wind, studding the verge with colour. The earth smelled of fresh, growing things. Even before we reached the river, I could hear the trickle of the groundwater beneath us, seeping through the soil. Our progress was slow as Robin had to investigate the tiny, bedraggled corpse of a mouse, and sluice his boots in every puddle. When we arrived at the riverbank we dangled for tadpoles in a slow-flowing bend. I’d brought jam jars and Robin ladled phlegmy gobs of wriggling ooze into them. He surveyed the tadpoles writhing in the water, gloriously revolted.

  ‘They’re crotchets,’ he announced. ‘But when they wiggle their tails, they turn into quavers.’ He rubbed a filthy hand across his face, streaking it with mud or goodness knew what. ‘I shall write them a sonata. A tadpole sonata.’

  ‘What an excellent idea,’ I said. ‘And how will you create the musical effect of slime?’

  Robin scratched his nose and considered the matter. Crouching on his haunches, he was silent for a moment. ‘There’s something I’m not supposed to tell you, Grandpa.’

  ‘Who said you’re not supposed to tell me?’

  ‘Mummy.’

  This put me in a bit of a quandary – I was more than a little curious to know something that Clara had insisted Robin conceal. On the other hand, I didn’t want to land the poor fellow in hot water with his mother.

  ‘Oh dear. Then I suppose you’d better not.’

  Robin scowled. ‘I’m going to tell you and you can just not tell Mummy that I told you.’ He glanced up at me. ‘You’re very old, Grandpa. You should be good at keeping secrets. You might even die before you have a chance to tell.’

  I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this. ‘I’ll do my best to keep the secret. Hopefully my death won’t be necessary.’

  Robin avoided meeting my eye. ‘Some people want me to play piano on the telly.’

  Anger threaded through me. ‘What people?’

  ‘I dunno. Some people. Daddy knows them. I’m not supposed to tell you. Mummy said, “Grandpa won’t like it. Robin George Bennet, you mustn’t tell Grandpa because he won’t like it one bit.”’

  ‘Bloody right,’ I said. ‘For God’s sake. What are they thinking? Ruddy fools.’

  I was almost shouting and Robin looked as if he might start to cry.

  ‘Oh, darling. I’m sorry. I’m not angry with you.’

  ‘Don’t you like the telly?’

  ‘I don’t like children on the telly.’

  ‘Never? Then you couldn’t have kids in any of the shows. Even the ones for kids.’

  ‘That’s different. I don’t think that bright young chaps like you should perform in front of people. Not till you’re older.’

  We pottered about by the river for a little longer, but I kept checking my watch, wanting to return to the house and wait for Clara. It grew cold and we headed back. Exhausted, Robin struggled to walk and whined for me to carry him. I heaved him onto my shoulders, invigorated that I was still strong enough. There’s life in this old dog yet, I declared silently. I hummed an old tune as we trudged back to the house. Robin was so tired that I laid him down to snooze in the drawing room, tucking him under the ancient horsehair blanket, which he insisted upon and then complained was itchy. I poured myself a Scotch and waited.

  I heard the rumble of wheel
s on gravel. A few minutes later voices echoed in the passage. Lucy and Clara appeared in the drawing room. I pointed to Robin and put my finger to my lips. Clara turned round and waved at her daughters to be quiet. Katy and Annabel crept in, tiptoeing elaborately, and lay down beside the fire. Ralph followed a moment later and, after helping himself to a slug of the good Scotch, stretched out in the chair nearest the fire. I stiffened.

  ‘Well, how was it?’ I said quietly.

  Lucy shrugged. ‘Short. Sad.’

  I didn’t know what to add to this. I was sure that there was some kind of pleasantry invented for the occasion but not knowing what it was I said nothing. The girls looked very smart. They wore dark skirt suits and I thought how pretty my daughters were. Such things shouldn’t matter but they do.

  ‘Darlings, would you like a drink? Gin and tonic? A glass of wine?’

  ‘Gin and tonic,’ called Katy from the hearthrug, making her sister giggle.

  I opened a bottle of wine, found some crisps and we settled back beside the fire. The children sipped lemonade. Katy eyed me with interest.

  ‘The rabbi wondered why you weren’t there. He thought you were poorly. He said we could have done it another time when you were better.’

  ‘I’m not poorly,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ agreed Katy.

  She was fishing for information. I couldn’t understand how these women learned such tactics so young. I glanced at my son-in-law, occupied with his whisky and filling in the crossword on my copy of The Times (another habit I can’t abide – what sort of chap does another chap’s crossword without checking first?) I was outflanked by women, and the men who ought to be on my side were either aged five and fast asleep or, in the case of Ralph, unhelpful and hostile. I decided it was time to change the topic of conversation.

  ‘Robin tells me that you want him to go on some television show.’

  ‘Blast it, Clara. I thought you’d told him not to say anything,’ snapped Ralph, no longer making an effort to be quiet.