Love Song

by Charlotte Bingham

  Even so, as Alexander drove them further and further away from their old, happy, home, she realized that her unshakable sense of foreboding must seem pretty strange to anyone else. It was as if she was moving towards self-immolation, not into an old, enviably beautiful, eighteenth-century house.

  After all, the girls had been awestruck when they first saw Hatcombe, and, when it had finally sunk in that the country house with its acres of parkland was actually to be their new home, the problems which had been dividing the family seemed to melt away and they could not wait to leave London. Even Rose seemed to have become reconciled to the idea and Claire had long forgotten the possible misery of starting at a new school. So why did Hope feel as she did?

  Because she didn’t trust what was happening? Because she felt it was all slightly unreal? Or was it, as Alexander had said to her late one night, because she had had no real say in the matter? Was she really what he, jokingly, called a control freak? Was she actually resentful of this golden opportunity which was being afforded her family because it had nothing to do with her?

  ‘You are a walking womb,’ Alexander loved to tease her. ‘Not just down there, up here. In your head. You are the giver of life, you like to be the creator. Actually, you are a right little deity in your own way, do you know that? And like all little gods, you move in some very mysterious ways.’

  However, as with most new enterprises the initial euphoria of novelty finally overcame any doubts or worries that might have beset a family moving from the warmth and security of their familiar home to the uncharted territory of a dilapidated old house deep in the heart of rural Wiltshire. Besides, once Hope had made up her mind to do something she was not someone who would permit herself to give in to despair.

  The glorious weather certainly helped, but mostly it was everyone else’s enthusiasm which finally carried Hope along, so that on arrival at Hatcombe she determined that the first thing she would set her mind to doing was making sure that everyone was as comfortable as possible, and that Aunt Rosabel was not disturbed in any ways that she might not like.

  With that in mind, as soon as they arrived and even while the removal men were still unpacking the pantechnicon Hope set about looking for the most waterproof outbuilding on the estate, somewhere where, as she said, ‘the girls can play music and camp out for the rest of the summer while we unpack and sort out the rooms the way that will be best for everyone’.

  Leaving little Letty in charge of Verna, who was more than delighted to be left to spread out a rug and open a picnic for the girls in one of the back meadows – summer having moved in so fast on spring that the bluebells in the wild woods beyond the garden were only just discernible – Hope started to explore the outbuildings around the house.

  She finally decided that, since among other things it had electricity and was dry enough to store the straw and hay, the upper room in the main barn in the stable yard had to be the best site.

  ‘Where is Mrs Lander?’ Hope asked Aunt Rosabel once she had directed the girls towards their new ‘camp’.

  ‘With you all here I have no need of her, not for the moment anyway.’

  Aunt Rosabel smiled with real warmth, at the pantechnicon, at the summer coming in, at the spring departing, at the blue sky, at the few flowers on the climbers that were wearily making their aged way up the façade of her house.

  ‘Does she have somewhere else to go?’

  ‘Of course. She has gone to her sister. Housekeepers always have sisters. Usually in Seaford, I think you’ll find.’

  That was the end of that particular conversation for the time being as Aunt Rosabel steered Alexander away with her to have a private talk, leaving Hope in charge of the removal men. The good news was that Alexander and Hope could move into the housekeeper’s temporarily vacant cottage until such time as they had all sorted out where everything should be, how Aunt Rosabel wanted them actually to use the house, how happily she could put up with the girls living with her, and how little she minded.

  ‘And that is all any of us care about,’ Alexander told her, putting his arm round her shoulder, ‘that we should not disturb you.’

  His great-aunt beamed at him. She had done nothing but smile and laugh since their arrival. It was as if she had been born again, she told Alexander, or as if she and Uncle Harold were once more moving in themselves.

  Meanwhile, Hope and the three girls had set up camp in the main barn.

  ‘This is going to be fun,’ Claire announced. ‘I think I’m going to really love being here, you know, even if it does mean changing schools.’

  ‘’Course you are, you dork,’ Melinda replied, pinning her long blond hair back up on top of her head during a pause in the spring cleaning. ‘And just you wait till the stables are full of ponies and horses.’

  ‘You might have a bit of time to wait till that happens,’ Hope warned. ‘We have to move into the house first.’

  ‘Aunt Rosabel has promised us some ponies straight away,’ Melinda said dreamily. ‘She says it would be great to have some horses here again. She said she couldn’t wait to hear the hooves rattling over the cobblestones in the yard, and to be helping us bring them in from the fields, and we talked about how sweet grass-fed horses smell – the sweetest smell in the world, Aunt Rosabel said.’

  ‘Never mind, anyway, first things first,’ Hope commanded. ‘First we make this place fit for human habitation, and then we’ll see about horses.’

  During the next weeks, as the summer weather turned from warm to hot and Verna and the girls lived outside, swimming in the lake and picnicking in the fields, Hope found herself driving round the neighbourhood researching the various schools that might have vacancies for the girls in September. She finally found an old-fashioned but charmingly situated establishment on the north side of Marlborough which agreed to take all three Merriott girls.

  ‘But why do the gels have to go to school?’ Aunt Rosabel wanted to know at dinner in the cottage that night. ‘Should they not be educated at home, at Hatcombe? I know all Uncle Harold’s sisters were educated at home, as I was. Gels did not go to school in our day. Boys, certainly, but not gels.’

  There was a stunned silence around the table as the ‘gels’ digested this riveting fact. Claire immediately thought Whoopee! and, given a little more time, Melinda and Rose’s reactions were finally not dissimilar to their younger sister’s. The very idea of not going to school was bliss to Melinda, who immediately imagined herself going to work in a racing yard, or making a stables at Hatcombe which she and Aunt Rosabel would run jointly, Aunt Rosabel knowing really quite a lot, having bred polo ponies with Uncle Harold.

  Seeing the excited looks being exchanged between her daughters, Hope felt she ought to say something, and, having first glanced towards Alexander, she plunged in. ‘I don’t think the girls would be happy just being educated at home, Aunt Rosabel. We’re not that sort of family, really. This school – I’ve heard awfully good things about it, and Mrs Robins the headmistress seems to be a very nice person. She has also been running the school for over twenty years, which just about says everything nowadays,’ Hope continued. ‘Most other head teachers seem to change every three or four years.’

  Aunt Rosabel nodded at this, and said, ‘Quite so,’ but Alexander touched her hand as if to say, I agree with you, but what can I do?

  After that there was a short silence before Aunt Rosabel announced sadly to Hope, ‘I am afraid I am not particularly partial to minted chicken. Not that it is not well cooked, it is simply not to my taste. Mint should be kept for new potatoes and that is all, in my opinion.’

  She pushed Hope’s carefully cooked food away from her and before Hope could say any more Alexander had done the same. ‘I agree with Aunt Rosabel, I’m afraid, darling. I find this dish just too sweet.’

  Aunt Rosabel smiled warmly at him and put her hand on his arm. ‘Perhaps we should discuss the menus together in future, Hope?’ she suggested gently.

  The old lady rose from the table
, dressed as always for dinner in a beautiful short cocktail dress of black taffeta. Alexander put out his arm for her and they walked slowly out of the small dining room to the sitting room.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mums, we’ll finish theirs,’ Melinda said to comfort Hope. ‘We’re all starving.’

  Hope looked at her eldest daughter and smiled, although Melinda was sure that for one awful minute she had seen tears in her mother’s eyes.

  ‘Stupid thing is,’ Claire whispered, sotto voce, as the other two quickly picked the rest of the minted chicken off the discarded plates, ‘she’s probably right. I mean we could learn just as much here at Hatcombe as at school, I should have thought.’

  ‘And save the fees,’ Rose added, her spirits lifting at the idea of never having to sit at a school desk with ‘normal’ girls.

  ‘They haven’t even had their pudding,’ Hope said, looking round at the sideboard at last. ‘I did home-made raspberry jellies with lemon mascarpone.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mums,’ Rose told her. ‘We’ll eat their share. As Mellie said, we’re still starving.’ She smiled and put a hand over her mother’s, and they looked at each other in the way that they had always used to do, sending Hope off to the kitchen greatly cheered.

  ‘As soon as you’ve finished pudding you can push off to the barn and have a good game of ping-pong,’ she told them on her return. ‘I bought some balls and ping-pong bats when I was in Wharton, cleaned up the old table and mended the net, so off with the lot of you.’

  ‘Great, Mums.’ Melinda grinned. ‘This is good.’

  As they went they all kissed her, and Rose made sure to give her an extra hug. Indeed it meant so much to Hope that they had all wanted to show her that they were on her side that she left the washing-up and walked out of the cottage by the back door, leaving Alexander and Aunt Rosabel to their murmured conversation while she walked round and round the grounds to think, and be quite quiet.

  The light of the moon was brilliant, and the stars too, and what with the sounds of the girls’ happy shouts coming from the barn, not to mention the now familiar hooting of the owls, combining with the noise of passing tractors returning late to their owners’ farms, for the first time since they had arrived Hope felt quietly at ease with Hatcombe, her sense of dread quite vanished. She knew that old houses, like old ladies, were difficult, and resisted change, and that it would take time for both Hatcombe and Aunt Rosabel to get used to them all, but suddenly she had a feeling that they well might and, that being so, they would be happy in their elegant new home, as happy as they had been in dear old familiar West Dean Drive.

  It seemed that Hope was not alone in that feeling, for in no time at all Hatcombe was becoming both a haven and a heaven to them all, even to Rose, who appeared to have either sublimated all her ambitions to become a dancer or rejected them. Outwardly anyway they were a happy bunch, all of them busy dreaming of what the house was going to become, and how their own lives would change. Even the beauty of the weather helped, wooing them all into a false sense of security, as if life at Hatcombe would always be, and had always been, so blessed.

  One afternoon Melinda borrowed her mother’s little automatic camera and set about recording that day, quite simply, from every one of its beautiful angles. The handyman in his straw hat who had come from the village to help in the vegetable garden, Verna pushing the baby down the drive towards the lake, where she would be photographed again as she sat rocking the old Victorian perambulator found at the back of one of the stables and watching dragonflies swooping, daringly, over the water. And then again Claire climbing the ladder to the apple loft where she loved to dream and read, and Hope spraying a rose in one of the borders.

  ‘This is truly excellent, wouldn’t you say, Aunt Rosabel?’ she asked when she had finally made her way round to the old lady’s side, where she sat in her chair on the daisy-strewn lawn staring back at the house with its pale apricot climbing roses and its lavender bushes edging the flower beds.

  ‘Oh yes. Truly excellent, as you say, Melinda darling. Just such a day as Uncle Harold and I would enjoy, always saying to each other, A day away from Hatcombe is a day wasted.’

  When they had first seen it at Easter they had all reckoned Hatcombe was the most beautiful house they had ever seen, with its tree-lined drive, the beautiful walled garden, the long sweeping lawns. All it needed was a touch from a magic wand to make it all come alive. For Melinda naturally the stables had been the place to centre her dreams, whereas for Claire it was the library or the lake where she liked to sketch, while Rose found herself drawn to the ancient forage barn, a fine timbered building imbued with an atmosphere which quite intoxicated her.

  ‘We should build a theatre here,’ she said one day to Claire. ‘It’s absolutely ideal for that. And we could put on plays, and have concerts in aid of charity. This place just cries out to be a theatre.’

  ‘It once was,’ Aunt Rosabel informed her when the subject came up. ‘When the family first came to Hatcombe, every year there would always be a concert or a play or some such event – usually Gilbert and Sullivan or an Agatha Christie. It was very much the cultural hub of village social activity. It was even used on many occasions for weddings and dances.’

  ‘I think we should return the barn to that,’ Rose announced. ‘I shall make it my task.’

  ‘While your task, Melinda, would seem to be recording the works going on at present for posterity,’ the old lady remarked one fine evening when once again she encountered Melinda busy taking pictures around the grounds.

  ‘Ssshhh, Aunt Rosabel,’ Melinda whispered. ‘For once I’ve caught Mums sleeping and I don’t want her to wake.’

  She pointed out Hope now fast asleep in a wooden liner chair under the big tree, in a white dress with her straw hat tipped slightly down over her face, an open book on her knee and beside her a basket full of flowers which she had just picked for the house from the still unkempt herbaceous border.

  ‘If this comes out,’ Melinda whispered, ‘I’m going to sell it to a postcard company.’

  ‘Ah, now that would be something.’ Aunt Rosabel slipped her arm through Melinda’s and, leaving Hope still peacefully asleep, they walked down the lawn towards the house as swallows dipped and dived above them.

  ‘These pictures of yours – just think, they will always be here. We should not forget that, Melinda. You and I gone, but your pictures still here, so that other people can remember this day with us, even though we won’t be here.’

  As she finished speaking, Melinda looked round and thought that even if her photographs never came out she would always remember these first days at Hatcombe as blissful. A summer garden droning with bees and pungent with the rare scents of truly old-fashioned roses, and the whole place full of birdsong. She sighed with contentment, but a little part of her felt sad for Aunt Rosabel, who, as they had walked down the lawn in the growing dusk, she had felt was thinking back to the past, to Uncle Harold, to the times when they had walked down the lawns together and the house had echoed to the shouts of their only son and his friends, every single one of whom had been killed in the last war.

  When Aunt Rosabel had disappeared into the house Melinda took herself off to photograph the stable block where she had already been at work. Entering under the clock tower and crossing the cobbled yard she tried to imagine what it must have been like in the days when the yard was full of hunters, carriage horses and polo ponies, instead of just rusting old machinery and discarded furniture. She could almost hear the clatter of hooves, the ring of the farrier’s tools, the whinnying of the horses and the voices of the riders returning from a hack round the parkland or the rumble of coaches making ready to leave. Just as Rose had ambitions to restore the barn so Melinda had ambitions to restore the stable block, until it was rebuilt and refurbished down to the last water bucket and manger, and looking just as it was in its heyday in some of Aunt Rosabel’s old sepia photos.

  But before all that could happen Aunt Rosabel had pro
mised her a horse of her own next Christmas, which added an even greater urgency to each passing day and week that brought her, or so it seemed it must, to that wonderful moment when she could settle back in a saddle of her own, on the back of a horse that would actually be hers.

  Unsurprisingly, in the weeks since they had first moved to Hatcombe, Melinda had grown not just to respect Aunt Rosabel, but to love her. She was old and snobbish certainly, and sometimes Melinda could see that she was even a little pettish, but having never really known either of her grandmothers – Hope’s mother having run off with a lover, and Alexander’s having died before any of them were born – Melinda found that getting to know a relation from so far back in the past was like following a maze, picking up certain threads in her conversation and trying to understand how much things had changed since she was just their age.

  But Melinda was not alone in loving to be with her. Claire was also discovering that Aunt Rosabel too had loved drawing and she seemed to think that Claire had a natural gift for it. Back in West Dean Drive she had used to spend hours drawing by herself, but now she would spend those hours not just drawing but painting with an old set of watercolours given to her by Aunt Rosabel.

  ‘Used to be Uncle Harold’s,’ she had murmured, handing the lovely old wooden box to her great-great-niece one sunny morning after breakfast. ‘I suddenly remembered where it was, in the night. He was very good at watercolours. But you must make sure you can sketch first, before you try to use them. You have to be able to draw before you attempt watercolours.’

  Claire did make sure that she did plenty of drawing, but after a while the lure of the watercolour set was too much, and it was with great excitement that she started to use them. Seated on a folding stool she would attempt to paint the lake in all its moments, gently passive at early morning, shimmering beneath a warm sun, or darkly inviting at dusk, fish jumping, wrens sleeping. After that she would move to the orchard glistening with its summer crop, the house at twilight, the landscape which stretched beyond the park up onto the Downs – all became subjects for her sketchbook.