The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘No. I won’t ever go back. I left and that was it.’

  ‘But it would do you good. This place . . .’

  I shrugged, somehow unable to explain how uneasy its perfection made me. I was relieved that Robin was here with me, to remind me of home and other things, otherwise I could see how tempting it would be to slide into a routine of early chicken dinners and rounds of sun-drenched bridge, surrendering all thought and desire. The magic kingdom wasn’t in Disney World; it was right here amongst the retirement villages and flawless golf greens of southern Florida.

  ‘I would very much like you to visit. Come for as long or as short a trip as you like. I want you to meet my girls. You really ought to meet Clara.’

  I was conscious that it must seem tactless to press the point, considering his lack of children or grandchildren, but it felt terribly important to me that he come. Perhaps he no longer wondered whether Clara might be his daughter.

  ‘It’s very kind of you, but no thank you. With all this, why would I go anywhere else?’

  Fronds of lurid flowers trembled in the breeze. The sprinklers clicked on with a whirr.

  ‘Don’t you want to see home again?’ I asked, knowing I was stepping onto dangerous ground with both feet.

  ‘Home?’ he said. ‘Home?’

  And his voice was so ugly and bitter that I knew he had not forgiven me for taking it from him.

  ‘I live here now,’ he said at last, with an easy smile. ‘I’ll never leave. Why would I? This is paradise.’

  He walked me to the car and shook hands with Robin. He did not invite us to come and see him again before we left. Two days later Robin and I flew to Disney World.

  June 2007

  I decided to sell the house. I’d had a bad fall before Christmas. My own fault; I was carrying far too much down the stairs and tripped on a step I ought to have had mended. I knew from the horrible crack when I landed that I’d broken something. Turned out I’d fractured my pelvis. It’s another unfortunate thing about getting older – one takes for ever to heal. I creaked along on two sticks for most of the spring and into early summer, nervous about venturing outside in the wet, always fretting about slipping and having another fall, but irritated by the weeds in the herbaceous border. Apparently sensing weakness, they seized the opportunity to create an empire amongst the petunias and drifts of snow-in-summer.

  When Clara and Lucy initiated The Conversation, it came as rather a relief. We sat on the terrace, surrounded by pink marguerites that gasped, unwatered, in their pots. Lucy poured me a very stiff gin.

  ‘Papa, do you think that perhaps the house is a bit too much for you?’

  To my shame, I wept. It was quite true. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone living in with me, but even I had to concede that a house with nine bedrooms, five reception rooms, a suite of attics and half a dozen ramshackle barns was a little large for one man approaching eighty.

  ‘You were born here. You grew up here. So did your children,’ I said to Clara, once I’d regained my composure.

  ‘Oh Papa,’ she said, and slid off her cushion, coming to sit beside my feet and resting her head on my lap as she did when she was a little girl.

  ‘Perhaps you could take it on?’ I asked her, knowing it was the worst of white elephants.

  I spent nearly seven thousand pounds each year on oil for the boiler in a futile attempt to keep the place warm. I’d negotiated a special rate with the electricity company. There was always something to be done: trouble with the roof, damp in the attics, a barn threatening collapse. Even though most of the land was now rented out to other farmers, it was still my responsibility to maintain the hedges and footpaths, and to supply water to the cattle troughs. That cost alone ran into the thousands. The water pipe through the meadows needed replacing and I was facing a bill of another twenty thousand.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Papa,’ said Clara, trying very hard not to cry. ‘A house like this needs so much money and so much time. I don’t have enough of either. After everything, I rather like my flat. It’s so easy and cosy. Even if I did have the money, I couldn’t cope with a house like this and with Robin.’

  I nodded and swallowed, not trusting myself to speak. What she said was perfectly true. Robin, now approaching puberty, remained consumed by music and uninterested in manners, showering or baths of any kind. In the hope of encouraging him to make friends, we’d allowed him to join the National Youth Orchestra, where to our dismay he’d entered the Young British Musician of the Year competition after forging Clara’s signature on the entry forms. We’d raged at him, pointing out that he’d committed fraud, to which he replied, ‘Either call the police and have them arrest me, or let me play the goddamn piano in the competition.’

  We decided to let him play the goddamn piano. And docked two pounds fifty from his weekly pocket money. I’m not sure he noticed but this pretence at discipline made the rest of us feel better.

  I turned to Lucy. ‘How about you, darling? You’ve always loved this place.’

  She drew her knees up to her chin, hugging them close. ‘Of course I do, Papa. We all do. But I can’t live here by myself. And I work in London.’

  ‘Perhaps as a weekend cottage then? We could get you some help.’

  ‘Papa, this would be a weekend cottage for a family of seventeen.’

  I nodded again and took a large gulp of gin. They were being horribly sensible. I studied my daughters. Even though around fifty, they remained extremely pretty. Clara so fair and Lucy still so dark – a major and a minor key. I remembered that, once, fifty had seemed alarmingly close to being old – perfectly ridiculous. They seemed so young to me and yet both girls – women, I supposed I must call them – had a resolve and stillness that comes only with age.

  ‘Would you like to live with us?’ asked Clara.

  Despite the tenderness of her tone, I sensed her reluctance.

  ‘No thank you,’ I said quickly. ‘I want to be by myself. I like my own company. I don’t want to be fumbling about in someone else’s kitchen. And I play my music horribly loud.’

  ‘You do,’ she agreed, clearly relieved I’d declined but glad she’d done her duty.

  ‘In that case,’ said Lucy, ‘how about moving into the little bungalow at the edge of the estate? It’s all on one floor. It needs a new bathroom and the kitchen’s a bit old-fashioned, but it’s got a pretty garden and lovely views of Hartgrove Hill.’

  ‘Yes, I must be able to see the hill,’ I agreed.

  I no longer slept well beyond the shadow of the ridge. I suppose some would have simply said that I didn’t travel well any more, but I was certain that it was the hill itself that mattered.

  ‘What do you think, Papa?’ asked Clara.

  They were poised, waiting. They’d clearly been discussing this for some time.

  ‘My father stayed there from time to time during the war. Later so did your uncle George.’

  ‘Of course we remember Uncle George living there,’ said Clara. ‘He grew the best strawberries. Scarlet as lipstick.’

  ‘I suppose we could replant the strawberry beds,’ I said.

  ‘Of course we can,’ said Clara.

  ‘Is there room for the piano? I can’t go anywhere without the Steinway,’ I said, suddenly panicked.

  If there wasn’t the lure of the piano, Robin might not come to visit.

  ‘I’ve measured the sitting room,’ said Lucy. ‘It fits beautifully.’

  ‘All right then,’ I said. ‘I agree.’

  A couple from London wanted to buy Hartgrove Hall. He’d been someone in the popular music business and she’d been a muse or a model or something or other. Although they’d been considering larger, grander houses elsewhere they liked what they insisted on referring to as the musical ‘pedigree’ of Hartgrove Hall, as though it had descended through a line of particularly splendid golden retrie
vers. Clara warned me not to be rude, as there hadn’t been any other offers. After a flurry of initial ecstasy from the estate agent, he then had the collywobbles, declaring that viewers had been put off by the amount of repair work needed.

  Nonetheless, Mr Too-White-Teeth and Mrs Shiny-Locks seemed very taken with the place when they came for tea. I’d taken one look at them, dispensed with the scones and jam, and brought out a large bottle of gin.

  ‘My dad used to bring me to the festivals here when I was a kid,’ explained Mr Too-White-Teeth. ‘It had a real fusty charm. It wasn’t smart or cool and it all smelled a bit of damp but I loved it.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, a little tightly. ‘Fuddy-duddy charm was our aim.’

  ‘Felix doesn’t mean no offence,’ said Mrs Shiny-Locks.

  ‘Fuck, no,’ said Mr Too-White-Teeth. ‘It was fucking awesome. Like Glastonbury in dinner suits but without the slime.’

  ‘Slime-free music, another of our goals,’ I said pointedly, at which Clara walloped me under the table.

  ‘We’re going to turn it into a dead nice boutique hotel, comfy and chichi, and then throw a festival in the gardens each summer. Probably not classical, though, yeah?’ said Mr Too-White-Teeth. ‘It’s hard to get bums on seats for that nowadays.’

  ‘Not young bums anyway,’ I agreed. ‘Old bums here in the country are usually quite happy to listen to a spot of Ravel or Vaughan Williams. Even Shostakovich as long as there’s some booze.’

  The thirty-something couple in their expensively ripped jeans and studded T-shirts stared at me, then grinned good-humouredly. I understood that they simply weren’t interested in tempting OAPs along to their concerts. They wanted their youthful audience to come all the way from London in their tiny shorts and fancy wellington boots. Clara berated me for being curmudgeonly, but the estate agent telephoned full of happiness, declaring that Mr Too-White-Teeth had found me so charming, he’d upped his offer.

  ‘See,’ I said to Clara in triumph. ‘I’m remarkably engaging. Even when I’m trying to be rude, people are enchanted.’

  After Clara left, I called Mr Too-White-Teeth and asked him to pop over the following day so that we could hash out the details. He arrived promptly after lunch and shook my hand warmly, while declaring, ‘If this is to squeeze any more out of me, I can’t do it, man. The wife’s already giving me grief.’

  ‘No, no, it isn’t that at all,’ I said. ‘You’re already being most generous. The place is falling to bits. You’ll be cursing me for months after you move in.’

  He laughed. ‘Yeah, the wife reckons we should get a survey done.’

  ‘Don’t bother. Everything needs to be fixed. I can tell you that.’

  ‘Well, no one can accuse you of mis-selling.’

  ‘I should think not,’ I retorted.

  He stared at me, puzzled. ‘What is it that you want to talk about then?’

  ‘Come for a walk with me,’ I said, dubiously regarding his much-too-clean trainers.

  Suitably attired in a pair of borrowed wellingtons, Mr Too-White-Teeth accompanied me up the hill. It took me far longer than I liked, and he stopped tactfully to admire the view on several occasions in order to allow me to catch my breath.

  ‘Constable once painted this view,’ I said. ‘The family had to flog the picture to pay for something or other before the war. It was a lovely painting, though.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I bought it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Came up again at Sotheby’s a few years back. Thought I’d hang it in the great hall.’

  ‘What a good thought.’

  We reached the woods. Spring was unfurling amongst the trees, while here and there appeared the feathered white of the hawthorn, like scattered brides. Catkins wobbled on the hazels and concealed in the branches I saw the smudge of last year’s birds’ nests, forlorn as abandoned cottages. The sun cast flickering spotlights across our faces and illuminated the scuttle of the woodland floor, the rush hour of earwigs and beetles. I led Felix further into the trees, and he fell silent, listening to the rustle of our footsteps and the mercenary squabble of the rooks. We paused at the pile of stones marking George’s grave.

  ‘This is my brother George,’ I said. ‘He’s buried here. Illegally, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Did you murder him?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Then I can’t see that it’s a problem.’

  ‘Thing is, one day, I want to be buried here too. Next to George. These woods are part of the estate, but you can’t ever fell them. You must leave them as they are.’

  ‘Wouldn’t want to do anything to ’em. They’re grand. Creepy. In a good way.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, relieved. ‘But I also want your word that when my time comes, you’ll let my daughters bury me here.’

  ‘All right. I don’t mind having a couple of old geezers buried in my woods. Could have worse neighbours.’

  He shook my hand.

  The soon-to-be new owners of Hartgrove also agreed to let me remain in the house for one last summer. A date for moving was set for the end of October. Then in July, Mr Too-White-Teeth – who, it appeared, was still somebody in the music business – persuaded some bright young thing to include a sample passage from one of my CDs on a new recording of her own and, for the first time in some years, I received a very pleasant cheque from my agent. I decided to blow the lot on champagne and a party.

  I invited the family, Albert and John, as well as, it seemed, most of the surviving members of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. I spent days fretting over the weather, but after a spell of drizzle the morning shrugged off the grey clouds like an old coat to reveal a freshly pressed blue sky beneath. I’d borrowed the marquee from the village hall and had it erected on one of the lawns, with trestle tables laid out in the shade of the lime trees. For once the lawns had been properly cut and rolled into stripes. I’d not been able to weed the borders, where wild poppies had seeded themselves but, with a sense of occasion, they all decided to pop at once and the garden was filled with scores of pink flowers, waving in the heat like dozens of chorus girls’ frilly bloomers.

  I left the catering firmly to my daughters, writing them a cheque and asking them to get on with it. Clara, Lucy and the granddaughters spent hours dismembering roast chickens, making cucumber sandwiches, spearing cocktail sausages, slicing up vast pork pies, buttering scones and cutting slabs of fruit cake. Albert, John and I poured gin and tonic into vats of ice and sliced lemon. The only trouble was that somebody put the empties into the recycling halfway through and so we had no idea how much gin we’d put in. Thinking of the orchestra members – retired or not – we added another litre or so, just to be on the safe side.

  The musicians had offered to provide music in rotation. As I was determined that this should be a celebration, not a funeral, my only proviso was that they must not play anything in D minor – the saddest of all keys.

  As the guests chattered on the lawns, half a dozen string players and a pair of flutes played a medley of my early folk-song collections. The English country garden of Hartgrove Hall was the most idyllic of settings for such music and I felt a pang at the thought of all the ghastly pop music that would make the windows rattle in years to come. I told myself sternly to stop, as this was sounding too close to regret. Annabel and Katy were dancing, teenage self-consciousness cast off in the wildness of the music as they whirled around and around with a couple of young musicians, yelping with joy. Home wasn’t a place. Home was music. As long as I had that, the bungalow beneath the hill would be pleasant enough.

  As I listened to the shouts and the furious pace of the dance – the fiddlers bowing faster and faster, scaling the old modal tunes as though they could play us backwards in time – I saw the concert-goers from the first festival, sipping champagne beneath the trees. They’d come here for years and years in the
ir dinner suits, the women in cocktail dresses, wearing their grandmothers’ pearls, to listen to our music. The Song of Hartgrove Hall was always the final piece of the festival. We’d performed it at the end by chance the second year, and the reception was such that we continued the tradition for years. I didn’t hear it the last time it was played. Edie wasn’t well during that summer. She’d been keeping her illness to herself, making light of her headaches, but that night she’d fainted. As Clara and I pleaded with her to let us call a doctor, she’d confessed. After that, there were no more concerts.

  ‘You look dangerously close to misery,’ said Albert, appearing by my side. ‘I told you that gin was a mistake. Always makes one melancholy.’

  I smiled. ‘I’m feeling old, Albert. It’s one thing to be old, it’s quite another to feel it.’

  He shrugged. ‘It will pass. Like wind. Only comes in bouts.’

  We meandered over to the potting shed. Several panes of glass were broken. I supposed I didn’t need to worry any more about having them mended. We sat down on a couple of overturned pots in the middle of the flower garden, where no one had planted out any seedlings since Edie had died. In years gone by, at this time of year it had been a riot of pastel-coloured sweet peas, sprouting in tangles along wigwams of willow, alongside vast floppy-headed dahlias, sprays of stocks, lupins and sweet williams. Yet, as I looked closely, amongst the weeds I noticed that nasturtiums still clambered across the ground, while foaming white daisies and scarlet hollyhocks had all continued to bloom. It heartened me somehow.

  ‘Come,’ I said to Albert, ‘enough maudlinness and nostalgia. Let’s eat some pork pie.’

  We helped ourselves to plates of food and retreated to the shade of a venerable oak. John joined us and we ate in silence, listening to the music.

  ‘I hope Robin’s going to play,’ said John when they stopped for a rest.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘He’s going to play the piece he’s chosen for the final of Young British Musician of the Year. He still gets dreadfully self-conscious in front of audiences. He’s all right with an impromptu crowd. He prefers it when people stumble across him playing, then shower him with compliments when he’s finished.’