The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘It’s freezing!’

  ‘Well, it is the North Sea,’ I say, smug in the safety of the shallows except that my feet are slowly growing numb.

  She paddles closer, grabs me round the waist and, hauling me off balance, with strong arms drags me deeper into the waves. I cough and choke, winded by the sheer cold. I’m plunged into ice and my skin burns. I cry out as I surface to find Sal treading water and laughing at me.

  ‘Told you it was bloody cold.’

  ‘Bloody goddamned cold,’ I say, between chattering teeth.

  Her blonde hair has turned dark and sticks smoothly to her scalp, giving her an instant shorn crop. She looks like an awfully pretty, snub-nosed boy. I swim over to her, pull her close and, fumbling, attempt to kiss her. I’m out of my depth in every sense. Our teeth clink. Spluttering, she pushes me away but I grip her more tightly and try again. For a second she lies passive and lets me kiss her, inexpertly prodding her mouth with my tongue. She ducks down and wriggles out of my grasp, bobbing up a few feet away, appraising me.

  ‘You’re not very good,’ she says, pleasantly. ‘Honestly, I thought you’d be better.’

  I don’t know what to say to this. Feeling pretty ghastly, I start to swim back to shore.

  ‘Don’t go,’ calls Sal.

  I ignore her and clamber out, shivering. The sun isn’t strong enough to warm me and I rub uselessly at my arms. She’s nothing but a tease, I tell myself. A nasty little tease – always Jack’s worst insult. At the thought of my brother, my humiliation deepens. No girl has ever criticised Jack’s amorous abilities, I’m sure.

  ‘Oh, don’t be sore,’ says Sal. ‘You just need some practice.’

  ‘Well, unless you’re going to oblige,’ I snap, still cross.

  ‘Oh, well. I suppose I could,’ she says, her head on one side, watching me with steady brown eyes.

  I pause, tempted and intrigued but still affronted.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Sal. ‘I was surprised is all. You seem like you’ve had lots of girls.’

  ‘I do?’

  My vanity marginally appeased, I soften and turn back to her. She’s trembling in the shallows, clearly frozen. Sand sticks to her legs and is plastered in her hair, which is poking up in tufts around her face like feathers. She looks ridiculous and I feel marginally less inadequate. I step back towards her, drape my sweater around her shoulders and pull her close, clumsily trying to warm her.

  ‘Yes, you look like you’ve been with dozens of girls,’ she says dryly.

  ‘Hundreds, more like,’ I say.

  ‘Here,’ she says, pulling me down onto the wet sand to lie beside her.

  I’m terribly cold and I want to dress and get warm more than I want to kiss her again, but I know this is feeble. She places a cool, damp hand behind my neck and draws me towards her. I let Sal kiss me and for a moment I wonder how many men she must have kissed to be this accomplished and then I don’t think at all.

  —

  She spends the afternoon resisting all my attempts to make love to her, pushing me away gently but firmly, whispering, ‘Later,’ both a promise and a reprimand. I have no sense of the timescale of ‘later’. Later tonight? Next year? Never? She has succeeded, however, in alleviating my concerns about singing tenor in the Vivaldi. I’m utterly preoccupied by persuading Sal to turn ‘later’ into ‘sooner’ or ‘right now’ and the Vivaldi is a mere inconvenience. I’ve never felt like this before about music. Usually it is the trivial inconveniences of life that get in the way of music.

  Sal sits in the sand, wearing her thick fisherman’s sweater, white knickers and nothing else. Her brassiere is draped over the marram grass to dry. She peers at me primly over her copy of the Vivaldi score and attempts a different course of instruction. I know that she’s naked under that awful sweater and I can’t concentrate at all on her recommendations about where to breathe.

  ‘You’re hopeless,’ she declares, exasperated.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ I say and, catching her, kiss her again, sliding my hand beneath her sweater to touch her small, cold breasts. To my delight, she doesn’t remove my hand immediately but allows me to fumble, inexpertly yet with enthusiasm.

  ‘But a decent student in other things,’ she says, flushing and shoving me away, with some determination.

  ‘Only decent?’

  ‘Promising.’

  ‘Bloody hell, that’s worse.’ I lunge for her again but she shifts away, placing the wretched score between us.

  ‘Now, Fox. The “Largo”.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I say, lying back in the sand and closing my eyes. I have a towering erection. I curse Marcus.

  I sing the damn piece through to placate her. It’s pretty ropy, but I’m no opera singer.

  ‘I suppose that’ll have to do,’ she says, not satisfied.

  ‘I suppose it will,’ I say. ‘I told you. I’m not a real singer. And, anyway, how come you know so much about choral technique? I thought you only sang show tunes.’

  ‘One day you’ll have to stop being such an awful snob about popular music.’

  I shrug. I don’t really see why I should, and all the other musicians here – especially Marcus – are as entrenched as I. Sal traces the lines on my palm, which tickles like hell, but it seems churlish to ask her to stop.

  ‘I trained to be an opera singer,’ she says. ‘But I’m not really built for it. My chest is too small, so it doesn’t have the resonance.’

  I register that she’s confiding some great disappointment, but I can’t help staring at her small bust. She notices my gaze and swats me.

  ‘My ribcage, you horrid thing,’ she says, and swats me again.

  ‘Opera’s loss,’ I say.

  I glance at her, bright yellow hair drying in the sun, long, thin legs brushed with sand. Freckles like biscuit crumbs are starting to emerge on her nose. She looks perfectly charming, the prettiest I’ve ever seen her.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t really see you as one of Wagner’s Valkyries.’

  ‘No,’ she agrees quietly. Although I’m only ribbing her, I’ve touched upon real sadness. She looks lost and gazes out to the horizon where grey swirls of cloud are gathering. The tide is coming in, swallowing the beach in greedy gulps, the water licking doglike at our toes.

  ‘I wish you’d write something for me like you did for Edie.’

  Her name flutters between us in the sunlight like a butterfly.

  ‘I’m not writing much at present,’ I say eventually, my voice cheery and false, like that of a stranger. ‘Shall we go back to the others? See how they’re getting on?’

  Sal stares at me for a moment and then starts to pull on her clothes.

  We build a bonfire on the beach, dragging fallen branches from the oak woods. Amongst the trees the air is cool and moist; the filtered sunlight, dappled and green, paints our faces. Even the trunks are smothered in lichen. Back home the woodland floor is a palette of colours, a blend of brown and yellow leaf litter, but here even the ground is carpeted in plush emerald moss, so dense that we seem to spring from foot to foot as we pad amongst the trunks. The young leaves of the ash are ribbed like the tender belly of a water snake. In fact I feel almost as though I’m strolling along the bottom of a seabed, which I suppose I am – albeit one that existed a hundred million years ago.

  At this thought, I’m pierced with a pang of homesickness. Walking on Hartgrove Hill as boys, we’d race out to scour the chalk for ammonites after the rain had prised them loose. These hard, round objects like cricket balls, imprinted with long-dead sea creatures, seemed like messages from another time when our hill had been submerged beneath the deep, dark ocean.

  ‘Here, Fox, give me a hand with this,’ calls Marcus and I run to help him with a large branch, glad of the distraction. I mustn’t think about home.

  We haul it along the ground, grunt
ing with the effort, and emerge from the wood with some relief. It’s cooler now but bright with an evening glow that will not fade for hours. We’re far enough north that the days stretch on and on, each one seeming to last twice as long as smog-filled ones in London. The light ignites the top of the stone hills overlooking the beach and illuminates the distant small isles across the water.

  The tower of wood on the beach has reached several feet. I drop my end of the branch.

  ‘Come on, Fox, no slacking,’ grumbles Marcus.

  ‘No. Leave it for now. We need to start the fire small and slow. Too much, too soon, and it won’t light properly.’

  Marcus chuckles. ‘I forget that you’re a country boy.’

  I smile, gratified. ‘Here, does anyone have a match?’

  Sal passes me one and I crouch, lighting the fire, which blooms in an instant. Sal’s changed into a skirt, her fisherman’s sweater tugged low over the waistband, but her feet are still bare. She slides up behind me and slips her skinny arms around my waist. I can feel the others watching us surreptitiously, their conversations suddenly growing louder as they pretend not to notice. I preen in the imagined envy of the other chaps. We stand, wrapped in one another, and watch the flames catch, first in the dry leaves and moss and then in the wood, which starts to burn with a hungry snap. I toss on a driftwood log and it blazes blue. It’s still light but all the heat has gone from the day, and the low sun lingers above the horizon, as if reluctant to leave.

  ‘Come,’ says Marcus, clicking his fingers.

  Reluctantly, Sal and I break apart and follow the musicians who’ve dragged the sofa and chairs nearer to the bonfire. I notice that the woodwind, like spaniels, have claimed the spot closest to the blaze. They look supine and ready to nap. The cellist perches uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa, his cello’s pointed stand sinking into the sand like a high-heeled shoe. He swears loudly and complains vociferously to Marcus about the damp spoiling the woodwork.

  Marcus takes no notice. He’s built himself a podium out of wet sand at the furthest point from the fire. The violins flock around his feet, gazing up at him with something close to adoration. His hair has grown in the weeks we’ve been here and, uncombed and straggling, in the light from the flames it gleams wild and red, making him appear at once like Moses and the burning bush. I’m torn between wanting to laugh – the notion of a performance of Vivaldi cobbled together on a beach is ludicrous – and finding myself being drawn in, seduced by Marcus’s seriousness. He stands on his makeshift podium with his eyes closed, baton at his side, and bows at the sea as if it were a vast, unseen audience. He motions to Sal and me. She takes my hand, leading me to a pair of hard, upright chairs to the side of the musicians. The tide has begun to retreat, leaving a wide ribbon of smooth sand, pristine white and gleaming in the fading light. I feel dusk fall, the shift between day and night.

  Marcus raises his baton and the orchestra starts to play the first movement from Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor. And to my wonderment they are an orchestra, not a ragtag assortment of odd musicians, but parts of a whole, the rowers in a single boat, Marcus the coxswain effortlessly piloting them through. I’ve heard the piece a hundred times on the gramophone at Hartgrove Hall and once or twice in concert by orchestras grander and more illustrious than this motley crew, but I know that I’ll never hear it like this, with the wind rushing through the marram grass, and the grind of the tide pushing against the sand. Sal squeezes my fingers and I experience a rush of blood and warmth in my chest. Music feels much like love.

  It’s Sal’s turn to sing. The oboist stands and calls out the ‘Domine Deus’ from the Gloria, melancholy as the cry of a greylag goose. It flies across the water and, as Marcus nods to Sal, she echoes it, her small, sweet voice wrapping in and under the note of the oboe. Beneath them, the strings tiptoe up and down. Sal’s voice is girlish and pretty, and it lacks power. But somehow Marcus forces her to find a depth and sadness I’ve not heard before. She’ll never sing this solo before a real audience or in a concert hall, and that unhappiness and discontent seep into the melody, infusing it with melancholy. Sal sings of her disappointment at not being a great singer, and somehow becomes a better one.

  Then it’s my turn. To my amazement, Marcus coaxes a passable performance even from me. I decide to trust him and lean back into the music, to find that he catches me and leads me through, deft and sure. I listen to my own voice pouring out into the gathering dark. Marcus is a magician. For a night he can turn fragile warblers into singers. I want to hear what he can do with a full symphony orchestra. I curse myself for dropping my ticket on the floor of the gents. We finish, the notes slowly decay, and we all sit and listen to the sudden hush. The slap of the waves on the shore. The spit and hiss of damp wood on the fire.

  We wait instinctively for the applause that does not come but we hear it anyway in the rhythmic boom of the surf. It’s dark now and late. A paring of moon glints, casting a corridor of light upon the black water. I look at Marcus and can see even in the darkness that he’s drenched in sweat, as though he’s been running for miles and miles at full tilt.

  ‘Let’s swim!’ he calls, his voice giddy and loud.

  ‘No fear,’ I say to Sal. ‘Too bloody cold.’

  ‘Don’t tell them that,’ she whispers back with a giggle.

  Taking my hand in hers, she leads me away from the others and up the beach, past the dunes and back towards the oak woods. We hesitate on the boundary between the strand and the trees. The night woods are so dark that something primitive and instinctive buried inside us makes us pause, uneasy. It’s the frisson of strangeness that I feel at the top of Ringmoor at dusk, the sense of shadows, the echo of ancient footsteps, and at last something nameless and older still that watches us from the blackness. I take the first step, and tug Sal behind me across the threshold. She cries out in pain.

  ‘Ouch, my foot.’

  I glance down. She’s still not wearing shoes. Concealed in the cushions of moss are roots and stones and pine needles. I pick her up and, panting with effort, carry her, laughing, into the thicket. She’s heavier than I expect, but she wraps her arms around my neck and I can smell the sandy, heather scent of her skin. I sense my advantage. For the first time today, I don’t feel inept. Sweating now, I bear her deeper into the wood. The trees become less dense; beeches and moss give way to bluebells and wild garlic. Their fragrance is stronger at night, so potent that I can taste it at the back of my throat. As my steps crush the flowers, they release still more perfume, thick as smoke. The white blooms of garlic are stars littering the woodland floor.

  The smell of the place confounds me. It’s the very essence of Hartgrove copse in spring – but here the bluebells are mixed with something else, peat and salt carried in from the sea. I hear the creak of the trees like old bones and the distant wash of the tide. I set Sal down and she tries to walk but falters, the rough ground hurting her feet. She’s pinned. I smile and kiss her.

  ‘Come sit,’ I say between kisses, trying to tug her down beside me.

  She flutters, undecided.

  ‘Come on.’

  She allows herself to be drawn to lie beside me. We’re both dishevelled. My shirt is filthy and I’ve lost a button. I slide my hand up her thigh and beneath her skirt. She trembles, I hope in anticipation. The stink of garlic is too much, sickly and overwhelming. The ground is moist. I flick away something with a multitude of legs scurrying across my cheek. This time Sal lets me roll up her jumper and with clumsy and too-eager fingers I find her nipples, hard as beads. I want her but I’m also filled with profound relief that I’m no longer going to be a virgin. I think of Edie but only for a moment and only from habit. I’ve thought of doing this with Edie a thousand times but it’s a picture from a book, static and unyielding, and Sal’s breast is soft and warm under my fingers. It starts to rain but we do not stop.

  Marcus sends the others home. Only Sal, Marcus
and I remain for the summer. We’re a comfortable threesome. Sal cooks and sings and sleeps with me at night. And sometimes in the afternoons when Marcus goes for a walk – we suspect for the very purpose of allowing us time alone. Music and sex. Even as they pass, I know that these are halcyon days.

  Mrs Partick informs us with some delight that we’ve been labelled ‘the fornicators’ and that our souls are prayed for every Sabbath – whether for our rehabilitation or our eternal condemnation, she declines to say. She lingers in the garden with us after she’s finished cleaning, smoking her pipe and, to my great delight, singing bawdy songs in Old Scots. I can’t understand the half of them but I can tell they’re lewd by her cackles and winks. One evening she conjures a bottle of thirty-year-old Macallan, and we all sit outside amongst the heather, drinking and listening to her sing. She leans close to me, confiding her song like a filthy joke, her breath like shortbread.

  I’ve had no news of Hartgrove since I left; I daren’t hope that George and Jack have managed to extend the stay of execution. I still can’t bring myself to write and I won’t ask Sal to enquire on my behalf. Each week I scour the copies of The Times and the Telegraph, which Marcus has sent up and which arrive a full fortnight out of date, brimming with old reports. Here and there is a mention of an ancient house that has been felled like a diseased tree. I read with dread but either Hartgrove Hall is safe or it is insufficiently grand to merit a mention. The loss of the place might be a blow to us but not to the nation. It would not signal the end of a great dynasty, only of a family. In my mind, the piece I’m trying to write becomes both an elegy – the Hall’s destruction seems inevitable – and an apology. I should not have left as I did. My running away seems childish, my subsequent silence cowardly.

  One morning the boat arrives and along with the newspapers and post for Marcus and Sal is a package for me. I’m bewildered as no one knows that I’m here. At breakfast while we pick kipper bones from our teeth I unwrap the parcel. Inside is the Not-Constable painting of Hartgrove barrow. I stare at the murky colours and sniff the canvas, conscious of the familiar smell. I shake the wrappings but there’s no message to say who’s sent it. I suppose it must be either Edie or George. To my shame, I hope it’s Edie. I turn to Sal, who’s studying the picture with curiosity.