The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  Ten minutes later Robin sprang into the music room, while I was still bathing in self-pity.

  ‘Hello, Grandpa!’ he said and came to sit beside me at the piano, where I was reviewing a concerto I’d been attempting. He’d shot up in the past few months, and to his utter delight could now reach the pedals.

  ‘Can I give it a go?’ he said, glancing through the pages.

  ‘Perhaps later. I’m too cross to think at the moment.’

  ‘Ah. Are you growing too? I get cross when I grow, Mum says.’

  ‘I’m certainly not growing. Shrinking perhaps.’

  ‘Shrinking? Poor you. No wonder you’re cross. Well, if you can’t reach the pedals any more, I can do them for you, like you used to for me when I was little.’

  I laughed despite myself. He’d managed them alone for a mere matter of weeks.

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind, Robin.’

  I surrendered my chair to him and listened for nearly two hours while he practised without pausing for so much as a pee or a glass of water.

  ‘You’re really coming on, darling.’

  ‘I played in school assembly on Monday.’

  ‘So I heard. Did it go well? They can’t have known what had hit ’em.’

  I’d finally agreed with Clara that it would be a good thing for Robin to perform in front of his school. All the children learning musical instruments did so, apparently, and, according to Clara, the fact that Robin did not was odd. She also insisted that if the children could hear Robin, they’d understand why he was sometimes a little different – why he always chose piano practice over football or cricket. Perhaps she was right, but privately I suspected that a primary-school assembly was a very good place for him to play – the audience would not distinguish in its enthusiasm between a rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ wheezed out on a recorder or a distinctive interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat major.

  ‘Well, what did they make of it then?’

  ‘I was fantastic,’ he said, with the straightforwardness of the young. ‘I was told by Mrs Morgan to play for only ten minutes because the little ones in Reception and Year One couldn’t manage any more, but at the end of the first movement they clapped so hard that I played the second. And then I did the third even though she was waving at me to stop. I closed my eyes and pretended I couldn’t see her.’

  ‘Did they like those too?’

  ‘Oh yes. I played for over half an hour. Everyone was really late for first lesson.’

  ‘And even the little ones sat still?’

  ‘Yes. But when they went out, there was a puddle because Mark Stanton in Year One had done a wee on the floor.’

  ‘Oh dear. That’s a shame.’

  ‘Not really. He told me at break that he didn’t want to miss anything. That’s why he didn’t go to the loo even though he couldn’t hold it in. I thought it was a really nice compliment, actually.’

  ‘Yes, you’re quite right. I don’t think my music has ever made anyone pee on the floor.’

  Robin grinned. Clearly I’d underestimated the discernment of young children: they were perfectly capable of recognising extraordinary talent.

  After orange juice and chocolate cake in the kitchen, Robin turned to me. ‘Please can I try your new tune now? I’ve not been the first to play anything for ages.’

  In hindsight, I ought simply to have refused. I knew the piece wasn’t ready and I was in quite the wrong frame of mind. We returned to the music room, and I gave him the first few pages. I was surprised at how well they sounded. It was astonishing how the boy could sense what I was trying to say and tease out the intention, making it elegant and lyrical. He overheard my thoughts, even as I had them.

  ‘It’s not at all bad! Much better than I thought. You’re an absolute marvel,’ I said, and Robin’s ears pinked with pleasure as he continued to play.

  And then, inevitably, it went wrong. Our ideas diverged and it was no longer the piece I’d imagined but something else.

  ‘No. Stop. You’re not hearing it. Try again.’

  He faltered and then had another go. It was worse. It didn’t sound anything like what I’d envisaged.

  ‘Stop. No. Again.’

  He tried once more, but this time I stopped him after only a few bars.

  ‘It’s all off. Why can’t you hear it? Is there something wrong?’

  ‘You’re shouting, Grandpa.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Robin.’

  I tried to control my rising sense of panic. If Robin couldn’t hear it, then no one could and I’d be alone.

  ‘Try again. Go from the top. The first bit was wonderful.’

  Only this time it wasn’t. He played it differently and it was quite wrong. Not how I’d heard it at all.

  ‘No! For Christ’s sake, Marcus, just stop,’ I said, slamming the piano lid down.

  Robin snapped back his fingers just in time and turned to look at me, his mottled face now streaming with tears. ‘I’m not Marcus. I’m Robin.’

  I was instantly filled with remorse. ‘Oh darling, I’m sorry. It isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I’m not myself.’

  I tried to hug him, but Robin pushed me away. ‘I think I’d like to go home now,’ he said with trembling dignity. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t play it how you heard it in your head. I played it how I heard it in mine.’

  ‘Of course you did. I’m so sorry.’

  I telephoned Clara who came straight away. Shamefaced, I told her what had happened, while Robin stayed close to her, staring at me in wounded puzzlement.

  She sighed. ‘Hasn’t he got enough to cope with at the moment, Papa? I know you’re feeling pretty wretched, but you have to try. You’re supposed to be the grown-up.’

  ‘You’re quite right,’ I replied, feeling rotten. ‘I’m sorry, Robin,’ I said for the umpteenth time. ‘I’m not myself just now.’

  I offered him my hand, and he hesitated for a moment before shaking it.

  After they’d left, I went to lie down but I could not sleep. I listened to the wind rustle through the beeches and breathed in the sickly scent of the last honeysuckle. I heard the sound of the doorbell, shrill and insistent. I ignored it but it rang a second time and then a third. Thoroughly put out, I hastened downstairs to find a young woman on the doorstep.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Fox-Talbot, you did say three o’clock, didn’t you?’

  ‘Three o’clock for what exactly?’

  Had I forgotten the chiropodist again?

  ‘I’m Emma Livingstone from The Times. We were going to talk about the Marcus Albright memorial concert?’

  ‘Oh, yes. So we were.’

  She stared at me, glancing down at my feet in their socks, part inconvenienced journalist and part social services concern. ‘We can reschedule if you like but it might end up being too late to run the interview before the concert.’

  ‘No. No. Mustn’t risk that. Come on in.’

  A little later, we were safely ensconced in the music room, a tape recorder and two cups of tea between us. She looked to me to be about Clara’s age. She wore black-rimmed spectacles, her dark hair was threaded with grey and she had that tired, smudged look of women in their forties with small children. I noticed a little trail of jam on her T-shirt. Her linen trousers had not been ironed. I supposed most women didn’t bother with such things nowadays.

  ‘So, you met in the 1950s?’

  ‘I’m so terribly sorry. I met whom?’

  Still agitated after the upset with Robin, I realised with some alarm that I was finding it difficult to concentrate on the young woman’s questions.

  ‘Did you meet Marcus Albright in the 1950s?’

  ‘No, it would have been earlier than that. Forty-eight or forty-nine.’

  ‘You often describe him as your collaborator, which intrigues me because, fam
ously, you never let him conduct your work.’

  ‘I did once. Terrible mistake. Sounded bloody awful. But he was my first listener. After Edie, that is. Edie, my wife. She was like my own ears. I didn’t know what I thought about something until Edie told me. Now with them both gone, I feel rather as if I’m going deaf. I’m unsure half the time whether what I’m hearing is any good or not.’

  I glanced down at the tape recorder. ‘Leave that bit out, would you? Makes me sound a bit doolally.’

  ‘I don’t think it does. It makes you sound like a man who’s lost people he loved.’

  ‘Now I sound pathetic. An emotional squeeze-box. I’ve always loathed the accordion.’

  She stared at me. ‘I’ll leave it out.’ She scribbled something in her notebook.

  I fidgeted. The business with Robin was itching away at me like a nasty woollen vest. Although I wanted to call Clara and find out whether he was all right, I supposed I ought to leave them in peace for a while.

  ‘And you and Marcus were very close.’

  ‘Yes, we were. For more than fifty years.’

  To my utter shame and horror, I had the dreadful feeling that I was about to cry. At that moment I could think of no indignity worse than sitting in an interview with a jam-speckled woman from The Times and sobbing. Perhaps that’s why I found myself blurting out, ‘Marcus was family essentially. He was my brother George’s lover on and off for many years.’

  I took momentary glee in the look of sheer surprise on her face, then felt a twinge of anxiety about how thoroughly inappropriate this admission was. On the plus side, I no longer felt in the least like bawling.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t possibly print that,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  She removed her spectacles and gave a tiny, schoolmistressy sigh. ‘Fine. But you do realise that you’re waving candy bars under my nose and then telling me that I can’t eat them?’

  ‘Oh dear. But it’s quite out of the question. Marcus wouldn’t have minded in the least – indeed, I was always begging him for more discretion over his affairs, but George was a very private person. I miss George. He was a good egg.’

  ‘He was your middle brother?’

  ‘Yes. And terribly attractive, according to Marcus. He always complained that George had a hard time of it. Said people noticed me and, of course, Jack. Everyone noticed Jack. But old George got rather left out of things.’

  George who never reproached me or Edie about what we had done, who’d simply sat and listened when we told him. He did not blame us even when it transpired that Jack had left without saying goodbye to him. I’d thought that was callous; after all, George, good old George, was not to blame but then, I’d supposed, I could hardly complain about my brother disappearing and cutting off contact. He had far better reason than I had ever had. Latterly I had begun to view it as an act of kindness. Perhaps George would have tried to go with him to God knows where and Jack had known that would never do. George needed Hartgrove. He could not leave the Hall and be happy.

  George missed Jack dreadfully. George’s loss was pure while mine was edged with relief. No longer having to face Jack, I did not have to face my guilt daily. I could pack it neatly away and try not to think of it in the quiet and the dark. Jack’s absence was soon filled with Clara, who wriggled into the void he had created, noisy and vital, until soon we didn’t notice any hole at all.

  The General took Jack’s absence at first as a joke, some farcical, bed-swapping fun.

  ‘Well, there’s no need for you two to marry, is there? She already has your last name.’

  He’d started to call Edie ‘Bathsheba’ until George quietly, tactfully, put a stop to it. Later, in his dotage, when the General persistently called me Jack, I thought that this was probably his way of telling me that he did not forgive me.

  The journalist leaned forward and adjusted her tape recorder. I wondered uneasily how much I had said aloud.

  ‘Who was Jack, Mr Fox-Talbot?’

  ‘My eldest brother.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’

  ‘We’re not in touch.’

  The queasy feeling returned. A yellow haze clouded my vision, and once again I was close to tears. This really would not do.

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Fox-Talbot? We can always do this another time.’

  ‘No. No. I’m perfectly fine. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to fetch me a glass of water from the kitchen? I think I’ve had rather too much sun today.’

  The woman glanced over to the window. The drizzle had settled into heavy rain. Still, she did not contradict me and trotted off to the kitchen while I furiously attempted to gather myself. I riffled through the CDs in their rack, trying to find something rousing to distract me. Every bloody one seemed to be conducted by sodding Marcus. He grinned at me from the covers, smugly gratified by my distress.

  The next CD was one of Edie’s. I’d conducted the Bournemouth Symphony as she sang the soprano solo for one of my arrangements of Dorset folk songs. It had not been a hit. No one else liked it much when Edie dared to sing anything other than her usual wartime drivel. I’d loved this record – I’d not been able to bear listening to it since she’d died. It was odd: I could come face to face with photographs of her and revel in a masochistic nostalgia, but I could not listen to her recordings. Even after several years the sound of her voice was too much.

  ‘Your water, Mr Fox-Talbot.’

  ‘Thank you, you’re most kind.’

  As I took it from her, I discovered that I was still holding Edie’s CD. Her photograph mimed a song at me, her mouth open like a bird’s.

  After the lady journalist left, I retreated into the garden. Usually I avoided interviews, and while I’d wanted to promote Marcus’s concert, I had an unpleasant feeling that I’d given away far too much of myself without saying anything useful about Marcus or the music. I surveyed the flower beds. The last of the Michaelmas daisies were black from frost, and the foliage was all dying back, leaving expanses of bare brown earth. Ours had always been a summer garden.

  I was worried about Robin. Knowing I’d upset him felt ghastly, and I was filled with shame. I’d relied too much on the boy. He’d given me a ball of string to help me find my way out of grief’s labyrinth. Now after Marcus I’d propped myself up on him once again. He wasn’t quite eight years old. Dizzy, I sat down on a rain-dashed bench, soaking my trousers. I hoped he’d forgive me. Children were more tolerant and more merciful than adults, weren’t they? If not, I’d buy him a box of chocolates and a piano. That ought to do it.

  I heard his voice ringing across the empty garden: I’m sorry I didn’t play it how you heard it in your head. I played it how I heard it in mine. He was no longer a musical savant playing by instinct. He now wanted to interpret for himself. He was no cipher but an independent artist. I felt a belly-punch of nostalgia for the baby musician he’d been – happy simply to listen to what my music told him. I supposed that this was how mothers must feel when their dimple-kneed toddlers metamorphose into skinny schoolboys. I felt horribly unnecessary to him. The charms of the old Steinway and cake with Grandpa would ebb, and one day he wouldn’t want to come and visit at all. I would be a duty, not a necessary pleasure. I registered with some disquiet that, for me, Robin had become inadvertently and dangerously essential.

  Tired and out of sorts, I was unable to resist the melancholy ruminations I usually told myself sternly to avoid. I’d lost a good many people over the years. It made me sound very careless. But it happened at my age. One missed them all. The Christmas card list became shorter and shorter. Each year one crossed off another few names. Saved a fortune on stamps.

  It began to drizzle and I returned to the house. I headed for the music room, but then I veered into Edie’s study instead. I’d still not emptied it. Mrs Stroud had finally tidied away Edie’s things into the desk but the room itself remained untouched. The pink dama
sk wallpaper. The pretty writing desk and the hopeless kitchen chair she used instead of a proper desk chair. The photographs of the children were spread out in a ring around the blotter. Clara on her wedding day – all white gauze and smiles; Lucy at graduation, looking tense and with an unflattering haircut. The grandchildren were pictured as they had been before Edie died: Annabel and Katy in matching polka-dot, little-girl dresses; Robin a serious-faced infant, wielding a rattle like a club.

  The room no longer contained the sense that Edie had just walked out for a moment, soon to return. It was a museum. The memories had been mothballed. I fumbled through her drawers and pulled out a mouldering pack of mints and an ancient packet of cigarettes, half empty. Edie always claimed that she’d stopped – but once in a while, I knew she’d sloped off to the potting shed like some elderly schoolgirl and had a quick fag behind the roses. I could always tell, but she preferred it if I pretended not to. I hadn’t thought about this for yonks, and it shook me. How many other aspects of her had I forgotten? She was vanishing, piece by piece, and I hadn’t even noticed.

  Delving deeper into her drawer, I found a copy of the Torah, which I hastily set aside. Any souvenirs from her religious endeavours served only to remind me that this was something we had not shared. It annoyed me, this defiance not only of logic but of us – she and her chum Jehovah wilfully excluding me.

  I yanked open the drawer with more force than was necessary and succeeded in spilling the contents all over the carpet. Swearing, I lowered myself painfully onto my knees and started to dump back into the drawer biros, paper clips, packets of tissues, letters and old Christmas cards. An elegant and familiar script caught my eye – I examined the picture on the card. A robin on a beach. A trifle vulgar and at odds with the beautiful handwriting inside, which I recognised even though I hadn’t seen it for many years. It was very similar to my own, only taller, more masculine, more graceful. My dizziness returned. I sat back, wondering how on earth I was going to get up.

  My heart crescendoed in my ears, its tempo quickening from a steady adagio to a furious allegrissimo. I was suddenly frightened that I would die right there of a heart attack on the not-terribly-clean carpet and no one would notice for days. Mrs Stroud would discover me as she prodded my corpse with the hoover. A pain bloomed across my chest and in my gut. I forced myself to breathe. I pretended my heartbeat was the pulse of the orchestra, and I its conductor – no instrument dare disobey the maestro. I tapped a slower rhythm in my head, and, sure enough, compliant and meek as a desk of second violins, my own heart obeyed my command of ritardando and slowed to a steadier pace. The pain subsided.