The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake, my heart beating wildly, sending too-hot blood pulsing through me. I used to feel like this before a big concert or on the eve of a new recording or when I had an idea for a new piece of music. Although it was after midnight, I was surprised to find that the house was reverberating with music. I was perplexed. Automatically, I checked the radio alarm clock beside my bed but it was switched off and the music I could hear was full and symphonic, with a richness in the strings – not the tinny warble of the ancient clock radio. I must have forgotten to lock the music-room door. Robin was probably playing along to some record.

  I slid out of bed and, seizing my dressing gown, hurried along the corridor. The door to the guest room where Robin slept was open, the curtains fluttering, and the blue light of the full moon shone on the neatly made bed. I’d quite forgotten that he wasn’t staying here tonight and had gone home with Clara. Puzzled, I padded into the music room. The sound grew louder. The melody was familiar and yet I was fairly certain that I hadn’t heard it before. The room was perfectly empty except for the swell of sound. It crashed and crescendoed about me, breaking like waves, and, with a surge of joy, I understood. The music was internal. I could hear it again.

  I sat down at what I’d come to see as Robin’s piano, and the melody tumbled from my fingers. I couldn’t play with the ease or passion of my grandson, but as I rummaged for a shock of manuscript paper, I knew that I had something. I wasn’t sure of the shape of it – it might be a sonata, or a song, or the opening theme for a larger work – but it was definitely something.

  Outside my window the moon cast skinny shadows of the aspen trees across the lawns. It was so bright that I was reluctant to turn on a side lamp and wrote in the strange half-light, reaching down into the dark for the melody that was immediately so familiar that I wondered whether I was remembering some remote childhood thing rather than conjuring it. I wrote and played while dawn snuck up behind Hartgrove Hill, a thin line of light drawn along the ridge that grew and stretched, smearing across the row of trees, and then was absorbed into the sky like blotting paper. The birds woke; their noisy chorus was rowdy interval chatter that interrupted my rhythm. I paused, drank tea and listened. When it was fully light, I slunk back to bed, exhausted and exhilarated, and I slept and did not dream.

  March 1950

  I loathe Marcus Albright. I loathe him with a fury. He’s a bloody good conductor and a bloody infuriating man. Absolutely bloody. I tell Sal that we’re leaving and to pack our bags, but she sits on the bed, smoking a cigarette, and doesn’t move as I rant. She’s heard it all before: I’ll rage and then complain to Marcus who won’t apologise. We’ll stay anyway. We always do. The landlady bangs on the ceiling with her mop handle to signal me to be quiet. I slump beside Sal and flop back on the bed.

  ‘You should dress,’ she says. ‘You’ll be late.’

  ‘What’s the point? He never lets me do anything. He won’t notice if I’m there or not. No one will.’

  Despite my protestations, I’m pulling on my shirt and Sal adjusts my winged collar. She’s already dressed in a fetching blue dress, velvet and sumptuous. I’m pinched with guilt.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, I’m being beastly.’

  She wrinkles her nose and bestows a kiss on my forehead.

  ‘It’s all right. I know you don’t mean it.’

  ‘Not to you, I don’t. But Marcus—’

  She turns and disappears to the bathroom before I have a chance to finish. I’m not sure whether she really needs to freshen up or simply wants to escape. Now that she’s gone and I don’t have an audience, my fury peters out into dreary resentment.

  The hideous hall clock cuckoos the half-hour – a present from the landlady’s equally ghastly sister that chirps maddeningly day and night – and reluctantly I jog down the stairs, calling to Sal that I’ll see her during the interval. The landlady presumes we’re married. She’s slovenly in her housekeeping but not in her morals, and she’d never permit us to live together in that fetid little room otherwise. We’ve never explicitly told her that we’re not married, so it’s a sin of omission concealing a greater sin. I suppose I really ought to marry Sal, make everything tidier. If she falls pregnant, then of course I shall. None of these thoughts makes me happy, only weary, as though the course of my life is meticulously timetabled like a Swiss railway line.

  It’s a Friday night and as I hasten along the pavement, bent against the wind and drizzle and fumbling for my brolly, I pass Hassidic men and boys in their black hats and black coats, strolling to the synagogue without an umbrella between them, apparently impervious to the rain. These fellows are how I’d imagined all Jews to be until I’d met Edie.

  I try not to think of her. I’m embarrassed when I recall our last conversation. I wish I could simply forget it, but when I wake in the night I play it over in my mind, wincing at my silliness. It’s ludicrous to call all that mooning and pining ‘love’. ‘Infatuation’ is more apt. I can admit this now that I’m nearly twenty-two. A composer with a published and professionally performed symphony who posts home cheques with nice round figures. I preen, rather pleased with myself. One day I shall return to Hartgrove Hall. I’ll apologise to Jack and George for leaving in the manner in which I did, and we’ll laugh and toast one another, putting it down to the behaviour of young men sowing their wild oats, and all will be forgotten. The cheques will enable it to be forgiven.

  As for Edie? Well, we’ll shake hands and I’ll be struck by how she’s not as pretty as Sal, never was. My goodness, she must be over thirty now. I smile at the very idea that I could love someone as old as all that.

  I turn the corner and reach the Winter Gardens. Its charming name belies the drab brick building at the end of a long suburban street. Looking more like a bowling alley than a concert hall, it’s an unprepossessing home for what is now, under Marcus’s severe leadership, a splendid orchestra. For the last two years he has vowed to find them more salubrious headquarters. Vast posters with a flattering photograph of Marcus are plastered on every wall. I can’t understand how the orchestra can stomach the ego of the man but they do. They are hopelessly devoted to him. I find the whole thing profoundly irritating.

  It’s nearly six and I’m late. The box office clerk nods to me and I force myself not to hurry as I walk along the mildewed corridor towards Marcus’s dressing room. I don’t knock.

  ‘Hello, Fox,’ he calls, cheerful as ever.

  My latest work is strewn about him, the pages covered with a swarm of red ink. His dressing room is an absolute mess, littered with empty coffee cups, ashtrays, papers and endless scores, as well as several tailcoats and a regiment of shirts dangling over a hanging rail that needs to be mended. He notices none of this. He’s absolutely fixed on my score.

  ‘This bit is dreadful,’ he says, happily.

  I clench my jaw. Why didn’t I insist upon Sal packing up our things?

  ‘But this section I rather like. The entire orchestra is shaking its fist. Splendid stuff.’

  The compliment catches me off guard as it always does and for a moment he’s forgiven.

  ‘Now, would you pop back to my digs? The shirt I want isn’t here.’

  ‘What’s wrong with one of these?’ I say, pointing to the array of starched laundry.

  Marcus stretches his arms wide, signalling with a flourish to an imaginary orchestra. ‘All too tight across the shoulders. I need more room for the Beethoven.’

  I sigh and try to retrieve my spoiled score as I leave, but Marcus slaps at my wrist with his baton, an abhorrent schoolmaster’s trick. ‘Leave it. I’m not finished commenting yet.’

  I slam the door and stride up the corridor, hearing Marcus shout behind me, ‘Don’t despair! We’ll elevate you out of mediocrity yet! Oh, and fetch me a cheese sandwich, would you, there’s a good fellow.’

  Cursing him, I hurry out of the Winter Garde
ns and back onto the street. I walk quickly up the hill towards Marcus’s digs in one of the handsome Victorian villas in the more elegant part of town. The Bournemouth Musical Society is inevitably low on funds but some appearances must be upheld and the maestro’s residence thus possesses a soupçon of dilapidated grandeur.

  I glance at the sky. It’s between rain showers and, as I reach the top of the mount, a vista of the sea opens up below. Black clouds rush in from the horizon and slices of yellow light glint sharply between the gaps, catching the surface of the water, which flashes and gleams. The air smells of salt spray and fish and chips. My stomach gives a loud rumble and I realise I’m famished. Bugger Marcus and his shirt and his cheese sandwich. A few minutes later I’m strolling along the front in my white tie and tailcoat, eating chips from a fold of newspaper. I perch on a bench and watch the lightshow over the sea, licking vinegar and salt from my fingers and sniffing the metallic tang of more rain to come.

  ‘Fox? Is it really you?’

  I turn and there she is.

  Edie Rose.

  No, Edie Fox-Talbot.

  ‘It is you.’

  She steps forward as though to embrace me and then, thinking better of it, stops short.

  ‘I was coming to the concert and thought I might see you. And here you are.’

  ‘Here I am,’ I agree, momentarily stuck for anything to say.

  I reach out to shake her hand as I’ve been practising in my thoughts, only to find my fingers coated in chip grease. I resist the urge to wipe them down my dress trousers. Instead, I offer her a chip.

  ‘No, thanks,’ she says, with a shake of her head.

  I notice her hair is shorter. She looks uncertain but then she smiles and I’m reminded how pretty she is. She sits beside me on the bench. Her perfume is just the same. There is too much to say and so we say nothing. The threatened rain falls in a sluice wash. In a moment the pavement is awash. We splash along the front, searching for somewhere to shelter, but everything is closed this early in the season. I grab her hand and propel her onto the pier where we duck under the striped awning of a candyfloss stall. If we stand with our backs pressed against the locked shutters we can stay dry. I glance sadly at my shoes, which are wet through, as are Edie’s. Her stockings are sodden and stained with water. The rain drums on the tin roof, which magnifies the sound to a roar.

  I notice I’m still clasping her hand. I release her. I’m going to ask her why she’s coming to the concert, and about Jack and George and the house, even the General, and I want to know whether George managed to buy his cows, and I’ll tell her how I’ve been greedy for news, any stray snippet, and that I hear she’s been singing again and that I wanted to come and listen, but I knew I couldn’t simply sneak in and then go quietly away, so I thought it best that I didn’t come at all, and that I’m with Sal and I’ll probably marry her, and I’m sorry I didn’t write as I ought to have done, but I hope the cheques helped a little, and soon I’ll be able to spare a bit more, and that I miss Jack and George and the dark woods, and that she mustn’t worry, I didn’t miss her at all, but I’m not sure whether that’s true or not.

  ‘Dreadful weather,’ I say.

  ‘Isn’t it just.’

  We sit in a pub, drinking whisky and hot water, steaming gently beside the fire. It’s seven o’clock and I am not at the concert and Marcus does not have his preferred shirt. Or his cheese sandwich. I ought to go and meet Sal in the interval but I know I shan’t. I bat away a nudge of guilt as if it were an irksome bluebottle. Edie stares into her glass. Her eyes are such a peculiar wintry grey. She glances up at me and gives a tiny smile.

  ‘I heard your symphony. The Song of Hartgrove Hall.’

  My heart thump-thumps. I wonder that she can’t hear it. It dawns on me that it’s Edie’s opinion I’ve been wanting all along. I know Sal’s delight in the piece ought to be enough but it isn’t. It’s Edie’s voice that I hear as I write.

  ‘You were at the concert?’ I manage to say at last.

  ‘Yes. And then like a coward I crept away.’

  ‘Did Jack—?’

  She shakes her head. ‘He never goes to concerts.’

  From the way she says this, I understand that he’s still angry. I’m too apprehensive to ask whether she liked the music.

  ‘It’s changed a fair bit from the version you and I performed,’ I say, wishing instantly I hadn’t brought up that last evening. I hurry on. ‘The second movement with the piano worked well, but I wasn’t terribly happy with the singer. She wasn’t a patch on you.’

  ‘I thought Sal might have sung my part.’

  ‘So did she,’ I say dryly. ‘I wasn’t popular, let’s say. But what could I do? Her voice isn’t right.’

  ‘Brave man,’ says Edie, ‘choosing music over your girl.’

  ‘Or a foolish one.’

  ‘That too.’ She’s laughing at me and I find that I like it. ‘I’d hoped you’d be conducting.’

  ‘I wanted to. Marcus insisted he have the first shot at it but I loathed it. Marcus gets in the way of everything. He has to be the star, when it should be the music. I’ve refused to let him conduct anything of mine since.’ I sigh and rub my head, which is starting to throb. ‘But he won’t let me conduct anything at all until I do. We’ve reached a sort of stalemate. It’s all rather unpleasant.’

  I can hear how miserable I sound. How miserable I am.

  ‘Can’t you leave?’

  ‘His notes are jolly good. Nasty. Smug. But, regrettably, useful and I’m getting better.’

  We talk carefully, stepping around the gaping holes of what is unsaid. Edie licks her lips and I realise that she’s nervous.

  ‘I’d hoped choosing music would have made you happy,’ she says.

  This surprises me and I want to ask her whether she thought that was why I really left, but we’re edging towards dangerous ground.

  ‘Music does make me happy,’ I say instead. ‘It’s merely the nonsense that comes with it that I can’t bear.’

  We drink quickly, as it is easier than speaking.

  ‘Thank you for sending the painting of Hartgrove barrow,’ I say at last.

  Edie smiles. ‘How do you know it was from me?’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it was very kind.’

  ‘Not really.’ She looks down at the glass in her lap. ‘I hoped it might make you homesick. Silly, really. But I don’t want you to think it was done out of kindness. It was selfish. I wanted you to come back.’

  She pauses, chewing her lip, and I look at her, unsure suddenly whether her interest in my return is purely sisterly.

  ‘Come home, Fox,’ she says abruptly, her colour rising. ‘Just for a visit. To see Jack and George. They miss you. I know they do. We all do. Even the General.’

  At this I laugh. I can’t imagine the General missing anything or anyone.

  ‘He does. Jack wanted to give your room to one of the cranks George has to stay and the General absolutely forbade it. Wanted to know where you’d stay, should you chance to come home that week.’

  I’m oddly moved. To my shame, in all my thoughts of home I’ve pictured again and again the hills and the woods and the sloping fields and my brothers, but I’ve hardly thought about the General. At this moment I’m caught with a longing to see him, to see all of them.

  ‘Well, it’s good to know that the house is still standing in any case,’ I say.

  Edie sighs. ‘For the present. Oh, do come home. I’ll go away while you’re there, if that’s any easier – not that you even care for me in the least any more, I’m sure.’ She’s blushing now, a full and furious pink to the tips of her ears, and if I wasn’t equally embarrassed, I’d want to laugh.

  She takes my hand in hers. To the rest of the drinkers in the pub we must appear like lovers.
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br />   ‘Jack won’t let me put any more money in, but the truth is I don’t have much left. I’m singing again but even that’s not enough. They can’t possibly manage for more than a season or two. George is full of ideas but they aren’t very practical and Jack can’t talk to him, and the General sits in his library and reads the paper while everything goes to hell around him.’

  She releases my hand and leans back in her chair.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Fox, please, please come home.’

  She holds my gaze. And I know instantly that I’m lost once again. I love her. Always will, even if she is over thirty.

  I can’t return to Hartgrove, not yet, I tell her, but we agree to meet again in London for dinner at Claridge’s. The orchestra is playing at the Royal Albert Hall and we’re staying in fairly gruesome digs dotted around the grottier parts of Knightsbridge. For once I’m by myself: Sal has a horrid cold and has stayed in Bournemouth, victim to the doubtful ministrations of our landlady. At least the old so and so likes Sal better than me, I reassure myself, guilty about leaving her. But it’s not leaving Sal behind I’m ashamed of – no, it’s that I’m pleased she isn’t here. I’m glad I shall have Edie to myself.

  It’s nearly midnight and it’s taken me over an hour to escape from Marcus, who has a bloodhound’s nose for the scent of mischief. He allows me to leave, and leave alone, only when finally I confess whom I’m meeting. Then he raises an eyebrow and asks, suddenly serious, ‘Do I need to worry for Sal?’

  ‘No,’ I say with a laugh. ‘Don’t be perfectly ridiculous.’

  I wonder, as I sit waiting for Edie, whether his concern is indeed ridiculous. A shameful part of me hopes it isn’t. Then Edie walks in. She’s wearing a grey silk dress that matches her eyes, and, even in her high-heeled shoes, I notice how small she is. In her bare feet she’d hardly reach my shoulder. Her face lights up as she sees me and hurries over, apologising for being late. Fumbling, I kiss her cheek and squeeze her hand. She smells wonderful.