The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘Sit there and keep quiet and still or you’ll upset the bees,’ he says.

  I do as he says and listen while he sings again. This time he chooses a German Lied from Brahms and the bees grow sleepy once again, as though his voice is smoke. I’m intrigued. He reaches into the hive and pulls out another slab of dripping honeycomb, never ceasing his song.

  ‘I know that one,’ I say.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to be quiet?’ he says.

  ‘I thought you’d finished thieving.’

  ‘Yes, well. I suppose I have.’

  He busies himself around the hive. ‘The profusion of flowers have made the honey particularly good this year. The bees are blissful.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘They’re producing lots of honey and I can hear it in the sound of their hum. It has a purr to it. Like a cat.’

  It takes me a moment to realise that he’s teasing – he does it so rarely – then he throws back his head and roars with laughter.

  ‘Gosh, we always could get you to believe anything, Little Fox.’

  I smile. I’ve not been called that for a long time, but, next to the great mountain that is now George, I suppose I am Little Fox.

  ‘I do know where I’ve heard that last song,’ I say, sliding down from the gate. ‘It’s one of the Lieder from the Brahms suite that Marcus has been conducting. I didn’t know you’d been going to the rehearsals.’

  George flushes. An ungainly red like sunburn splashes across his neck.

  ‘I didn’t. I haven’t.’

  I’m embarrassing him, but I’m his brother and I want to know. ‘Then where did you hear it?’

  ‘Marcus taught it to me,’ he snaps.

  I stare at him. ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were friends.’

  ‘Well, we are,’ he says.

  George watches me steadily, his colour subsiding. I’m aware of the bees starting to hum all around us.

  The hum reaches a crescendo and changes key.

  ‘I think you should go,’ he says. ‘The bees are upset.’

  —

  I find Marcus during the interval. I ought to be looking through the score, but I’m perturbed. He’s holding court on the lawn, a glass of champagne in his hand and laughing loudly.

  ‘I take it that the first half went well,’ I say with a smile.

  ‘Yes, dear boy, I’m afraid you have a great deal to live up to.’ He nods to his admirers. ‘If you’ll excuse me, ladies, gentlemen. I must offer some words of wisdom to my protégé.’

  He slides his arm into mine and leads me away. ‘You see, I intend to accept compliments for your performance too. But if you cock anything up, you’re quite on your own.’

  He catches sight of my expression. ‘Oh don’t be silly, Fox. The piece is marvellous. You’re a distinctly average conductor but a fine composer. And a decent-looking fellow, which helps a good deal.’

  I’m sweating a little and I’d like to change my shirt before the performance. If I hurry, I’ll just have time. I must be more anxious than I’d thought.

  ‘Are you all right, Fox?’

  I look at him carefully. I’ve never asked Marcus outright if he’s queer. I’ve simply presumed. There are things one doesn’t mention. Until now, it’s never really been any of my affair.

  We reach the walled garden where a chorus of roses in oranges, yellows and reds fills the air with perfume.

  ‘Perhaps it’s none of my concern. But George—?’ I say, hoping that’s sufficient.

  Marcus’s face darkens, but only for a moment. Then he leans forward, catching my shoulder, kisses me hard on the mouth and releases me in an instant, before I even have a chance to shove him away. I’m speechless with cold indignation.

  ‘You were correct before, Fox. It is none of your concern.’

  He smiles serenely at me before turning and walking out of the garden, while I stand amongst the roses, outraged and none the wiser. I’d always believed that George had once loved Edie, and it’s possible I was mistaken. Yet, I’m sure that he did love her in his own way. I watch Marcus’s upright figure disappear around the corner. I suppose one can never really see into another man’s heart.

  The flowers wither in their vases, spewing pollen and petals across every surface. The compost heap is piled high with them, the smell of summer’s decay. A legion of girls from the village come to help with the great clean-up, supervised nominally by Chivers but really by Edie. They’re either too young or too old and mostly they’re interested only in having a good nose around the house, but still, we need any help we can find. Every bed must be stripped and the sheets sent to the laundry; the floors must be washed and swept, the grates emptied, the bathrooms scrubbed. Finally there is the melancholy task of shrouding the guest bedrooms and the principal rooms until next year’s festival.

  I despise this part. It’s thoroughly depressing, imbuing the house with that awful, last-day-of-summer-hols feeling one used to dread as a boy, knowing that the following day one would be packed off to school. That was one of the few times when I was glad not to have a mother. Those first days of each term at prep school, watching my pals pine for their mothers, were frightful, and I’d been profoundly relieved not to have to endure such a thing myself. Being separated from Jack and George at the end of each summer had been torment enough.

  Edie and I are the only members of the family to assist in the great clean-up. After several weeks playing host, striding through the house and garden in his dinner jacket with a ‘Black Baccara’ rose in his buttonhole, Jack has now declared he’s indispensable on the farm and, having changed into his overalls, has disappeared. I long to play the same trick – I can hear the rumble of the tractor making silage on the hill – but I feel bad about leaving Edie alone to face the dreary part. Not that I’m much help. I dodge a broom and narrowly miss slipping on a sopping-wet floor. I suspect that someone has merely upturned a bucket rather than washed the blasted thing.

  Yet I can’t find Edie anywhere. I scour the house from top to bottom, even asking the less sloppy-looking girls whether they’ve seen her, and I get nothing but shrugs. She’s not in the flower garden – the sweet peas are dropping and turning into pods on the willow wigwams now, and the lilies fade, uncut. I can’t see her on the lawn and I’m about to give up when I hear the sound of weeping. It’s an ugly sound. Uninhibited, animal grief.

  I find her crouched in the potting shed, amidst a citadel of broken flowerpots and last year’s mouldering compost.

  ‘Darling, what on earth’s the matter?’ I say, bending down and trying to hug her to me, but she pushes me away and continues to sob. Uselessly, I reach for my pocket handkerchief, which she takes and does not use, only twists around her finger.

  ‘Please try to breathe,’ I say. ‘Tell me what’s wrong. Are you ill?’

  She stares up at me, her face puffy and swollen, her cheeks sodden and her nose running. I wonder how long she’s been hiding here.

  ‘I’m having a baby.’

  She starts to cry again.

  ‘Oh, Edie.’

  This time she lets me embrace her, and I hug her tightly to my chest, hoping that her tears will subside. But I can’t help asking.

  ‘Is it mine?’

  ‘I don’t know. How could I possibly know?’

  ‘I thought women could tell these things.’

  ‘Oh, Fox. Don’t be ridiculous.’

  I hold her close, not wanting her to see that I’m wounded. It’s beastly knowing that she’s still sleeping with Jack. Again, I’m not permitted to be upset about it, not being the husband. I guessed she probably was but I discover that’s quite a different thing from knowing for sure.

  ‘What do you want to do? I can try to find a doctor to, well, you know, put a stop to the thing, if that’s what you want,’ I ask, as gently as I can.

&n
bsp; She sits back on an upturned flowerpot, rubs her eyes, smearing dirt across her cheek, and offers me a look of disdain.

  ‘It’s not a thing. It’s a baby. I’m going to be a mother.’

  She sounds absolutely certain and, for the first time since I found her in the potting shed, she stops crying.

  ‘The baby’s going to have a family. A proper one. Even if it’s just him and me.’

  She looks at me again, her expression grave and defiant.

  I kneel beside her, uncomfortably aware that I’m not party to this decision at all. I study her, wondering exactly how long she’s known.

  ‘What do you want to do, Edie? I don’t suppose we can carry on as we are.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Of course we can’t. The whole thing is a ghastly mess but we have to tidy it up before the baby appears. It’s not his fault.’ She sounds irritated and distant. ‘I have to do the right thing. It’s a bit late for it, I know, but there it is. I’ve been a coward long enough.’

  Dread gathers in the pit of my stomach. She doesn’t know who the father is and so I suppose she could discreetly cast me off. No one else would ever know. The possibility of this makes me crippled with anxiety. I suppose it’s the least selfish course but I don’t care.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ I say. I try to keep the note of pleading from my voice. ‘I love you.’

  ‘What if the baby’s Jack’s?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  I’m not sure that anything matters much other than that Edie doesn’t leave me. I’m vaguely aware that I ought to be considering the child in all this but it’s a tiny abstract, not yet a person. I try not to resent the ramifications that its very existence is causing in adult, fully realised lives.

  ‘We’ll get married. I’ll look after you both,’ I say.

  Edie studies me, saying nothing but nibbling on a fingernail.

  ‘I have to tell Jack,’ she says quietly.

  ‘Tell him what?’ I ask, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘That you’re leaving him? That you love me?’

  ‘Oh, Fox,’ she says.

  Her eyes fill with tears and with horrible clarity I understand that she doesn’t know what she will decide. I suppose that in one way or another she must love him too.

  ‘Well,’ I say, standing and drawing back from her.

  I look down at her, still perched on top of a terracotta flowerpot, my bedraggled handkerchief clutched in her hand. With her eyes bright from crying, she looks frightfully young.

  ‘Well,’ I repeat, ‘I’m not going to be dignified or magnanimous. I love you. Always have, I’m afraid. Expect I always will. I’m not entirely sure that I could manage without you.’

  She swallows and nods but does not speak.

  —

  We find Jack reading the newspaper in the morning room, squinting against the sunlight streaming through the windows. He smiles with simple pleasure at seeing us both.

  ‘Jack—’ says Edie.

  I can’t bear to watch as she tells him. We have done this, she and I. Like a coward, I look away, scrutinising the clouds ballooning across the sky.

  When she has finished, with an evident force of will, like an injured man scooping his guts back inside, Jack gathers himself, moves to sit on the window seat and looks out at the garden. It’s tactlessly beautiful: the lawns in perfect stripes, the borders purple with lavender and late summer bees. I see our three faces reflected in the glass like ghosts. This room will always be haunted for me now. I will never enter it without the guilt of remembering what I’ve done.

  Edie sits on the high-backed settle and sobs.

  ‘Please stop,’ says Jack, quietly.

  She stops.

  ‘I wish we could take it back,’ I say.

  ‘No you don’t. It’s carried on for years, so you say. And you love her?’

  ‘I do. Very much.’

  ‘Then don’t say you’d take it back. That makes it worse. Makes it some little affair. Is that all it was?’ His voice is very soft. He’s white with anger. A muscle in his forehead pulses.

  ‘No.’

  He turns to Edie, his face blank. ‘And do you love him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tears are streaming down her face now. ‘But I loved you too. I still do. I never meant to hurt you.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid you have.’

  I wish he weren’t so calm. I wish he’d rage and hit me. His eyes are wide with incredulity. The shame is overwhelming.

  ‘You’ve hurt me. Humiliated me. Sheer bloody betrayal is what it is. I’m not as clever as you or Fox. I simply don’t have the words to express what it is you’ve done to me.’

  Edie sobs again and this time she can’t stop. I want to go to her, but know I mustn’t. Jack pours us all a drink. Edie’s hands are trembling so badly that she can hardly hold the glass. Jack sits across from her, eyeing her steadily.

  ‘Please look at me, Edie. I’d like you to look at me while I’m speaking to you.’

  She raises her eyes. She looks so full of shame, so distraught, that I can hardly bear it. Even Jack is shaken.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ he says gently.

  He reaches out and takes her hand. Grateful at this apparent sign of forgiveness, she clasps it in both of hers. Despite everything, I feel an unconscionable spurt of jealousy. Jack sighs.

  ‘You are pregnant. There is no way to know whose child it is. Most likely Fox’s, since you and I aren’t quite the honeymooners we once were.’

  Edie looks down at her lap and instinctively tries to withdraw her hand but Jack holds onto it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Edie darling. I’m not trying to embarrass you, merely tell the truth. That’s what we’re trying to do, isn’t it?’

  She nods, unable to speak.

  ‘Now. I shall try to forgive you and raise the child as my own, if that’s what you want. Or you may divorce me. We can arrange it in the usual way. I’ll be discovered in Weston-super-Mare with some two-bit whore and you’ll be free to marry Fox here. But’ – and now for the first time Jack sounds angry; his voice wobbles with held-back rage – ‘but if you’d hoped that I would simply leave you so that you didn’t have to make a decision, I’m afraid that you’re quite mistaken.’

  Edie gazes at him in shock, a round spot of colour on each cheek.

  ‘We’re good men, Fox and I. We won’t make it easy and walk away from you, so you’ll have to choose.’

  ‘I’m so sorry—’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. Choose.’

  He speaks with some force. Edie looks from Jack to me, her eyes wide with alarm. I’m frightened. Terribly frightened that I might lose her. I feel sick. Blood rushes in my ears. Choose me. Oh God, choose me. A fly batters against the windowpane.

  ‘Fox,’ she says. ‘I choose Fox.’

  My heart hurries.

  Edie turns to Jack, eyes big with guilt. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Well. There we are,’ he says and stands. He brushes some imaginary muck from his trousers and straightens. He glances from Edie to me, daring us to pity him. We don’t dare.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life. The worst thing I’ll ever do.’ I offer him my hand, but he shakes his head and steps back.

  ‘No. I shan’t shake your hand, Fox. It isn’t all right and I don’t forgive you. Because I’m not eloquent and clever, you thought I didn’t love her as you could. You are wrong. I did and I do.’

  I’m shaken by the unhappiness and anger spilling from him. ‘I’m so sorry. Edie and I will leave this afternoon. You need never see us again.’

  Jack smiles sadly. ‘Leave or stay. Do what you want. I’m afraid I simply don’t care in the least what you do. But I shan’t stay here. Not for another minute. Not after what you’ve done. Everything at Hartgrove will remind me o
f you. Every path we walked together. Every bloody tree. I can’t look at what you’ve done. And I can’t forgive you.’

  I stand there, dumb.

  He shakes his head. ‘You’ve taken everything. My wife. My home. Perhaps even my child.’

  He walks to the window and stares out. A pair of swans swoop above the lake, their necks stretched out in flight like spurts of lightning. The sun catches on their wings, making them glint gold. I would prefer it to be raining, so that he left Hartgrove in soggy ugliness and not this sublime beauty. He looks away but if he sighs, I do not hear him.

  He pauses at the door. ‘Goodbye, Edie. Goodbye Fox.’

  And then he’s gone.

  October 2003

  I found the loneliness piercing. I’d begun to find a rhythm after Edie; altered, of course, but I’d started to believe in the possibility of pleasures here and there. After Marcus, I lost my footing again. Sleep eluded me. Frightened that the silence might return, I forced myself to write a little in the afternoons, but everything I produced seemed inadequate and thin.

  One Saturday morning, I read a grisly review of a new piece I’d been writing in the Telegraph. It had been performed at the Cheltenham Music Festival but I’d had a horrid cold and been unable to conduct, so John had stepped in at the last minute. I had never liked his style, but I’d been in quite a pinch. Uncharitably, I considered how much of the critic’s rudeness could be put down to John’s interpretation. Mostly the critic seemed put out that someone old had dared attempt something new. John telephoned to apologise. I wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it wasn’t your fault. He simply didn’t like the piece. That’s all there is to it.’

  There was a pause. Then I heard John sigh. ‘It’s the first time I’ve had to find a lousy review on my own. Usually Marcus has faxed the damned thing over to me before I’ve even woken up. You’d think I’d be glad but I’m not. I miss the old bugger.’

  ‘It’s the miserable thing about getting to our age. One starts to outlive one’s friends. It’s a lonely business.’

  After he’d rung off, I reread the review and, thoroughly depressed, asked myself whether, as well as outliving my friends, I’d outlived my era.