The Song of Hartgrove Hall

by Natasha Solomons

  Albert laughed. ‘Yes, I can appreciate the appeal of that, but it’s not really a career plan, though, is it? To play the piano here and there, hoping one’s audience pops by.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘But he’s still terribly young. I do worry about the competition being on television.’

  We were all silent and I recalled the only and somewhat disastrous occasion Robin had played before the cameras.

  Lucy hurried across the garden, stopping beside us and frowning. ‘Papa, will you come? Robin’s got into rather a pickle, I’m afraid. He’s very upset.’

  My heart sank. ‘Oh dear. Is it nerves? It’ll do him good to get them out of his system.’

  Lucy shifted awkwardly, running her hands down her jeans. ‘No. It’s not nerves, it’s gin.’

  We found him alternating between apologising and vomiting in the downstairs loo. Clara crouched beside him, stroking his back.

  ‘I’d be furious but I think this is punishment enough,’ she said.

  ‘Why on earth did you do it, Robin?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Grandpa—’ he mumbled, breaking off to be sick again. ‘I got scared. So many amazing musicians here. I didn’t want to mess it up.’

  I lowered myself awkwardly onto the side of the bath.

  ‘Don’t be silly. They’re the most understanding audience you’ll ever have.’

  ‘I know. I know.’

  ‘He said that he had a glass of gin and tonic to steady his nerves,’ said Clara with a glare. ‘It’s bloody strong.’

  ‘You said bloody,’ said Robin from halfway down the toilet bowl. ‘You never swear.’

  ‘Oh bloody well shut up,’ said Clara.

  ‘It did have a good snifter in it, but you weren’t supposed to be drinking it, young man,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, and beached himself on the bathmat, his skin the same ghastly avocado green as the bathroom suite.

  ‘Well, I don’t think you’ll be playing this afternoon,’ I said. ‘And if this is how the prospect of public performance makes you behave, then perhaps it’s for the best if you don’t play in the Young Musician competition. You can enter next year or the year after that. There’s no hurry.’

  ‘I want to do it this year,’ he said, anger turning him a marginally healthier shade.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ I said, turning to Clara.

  She stared down at him, hands on her hips, her expression a blend of bewilderment and love.

  ‘I want perfect behaviour up to the competition. One answer back or one stray sock out of the laundry basket and I’m withdrawing your name.’

  He nodded. ‘OK. Deal.’

  ‘And no gin or any other tipple to steel yourself,’ I said. ‘It’s a sign of the amateur and the hack. Are you an amateur?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jolly good. Then upstairs with you to sleep it off.’

  Lucy helped him up and, leaning on his aunt, he swayed up the stairs.

  ‘His grandmother suffered from just the same stage fright. It’s why she gave up singing in public in the end. She managed the spectacular pre-performance vomiting without the aid of gin.’

  ‘I hope he gets over it,’ said Clara. ‘If he doesn’t, he won’t get terribly far.’

  ‘Oh he might, but it simply won’t be as much fun.’

  I put my arm around her shoulders and planted a light kiss on her cheek. She’d got rather thin after the divorce, but to my relief this last year she’d started to put on a little weight again and seemed happier. I wondered whether she’d taken a lover. I hoped so.

  We returned to the garden where, to my surprise, an entire symphony orchestra had set up on the lawns. Nearly seventy musicians were perched on chairs, the brass section peering out from behind the hydrangea bushes, making their large clusters of blooms look like party hats. The percussion had chosen a spot on the loggia amongst the pots of marigolds and marguerites.

  Clara squeezed my arm. ‘They’re going to play The Song of Hartgrove Hall. It had to be the last piece.’

  I nodded and swallowed.

  John and Albert joined us. ‘Would you like to conduct?’ asked John. ‘I’m ready to step in, if you’d prefer to sit it out.’

  I felt a wave of dizziness and glanced about for a seat. There was none. My heart began its horrible machine-gun pit-pit. I remembered the dreadful reviews last time John had performed my work. I’d never liked the way he made me sound. If this was to be the last time this symphony was going to be played here, I’d better jolly well do it myself.

  ‘No thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Told you,’ said Albert with a smirk at John, who to my satisfaction looked rather put out.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said John with a shrug. ‘I’ll play it after you’re dead. I’m younger than you, remember.’

  I patted him fondly on the arm and helped myself to the baton in his breast pocket.

  As a young man I’d written this piece as my farewell to Hartgrove Hall. And yet the symphony itself, in the form of royalties and income from the festival, had helped to keep the house in the family for another fifty years. Up till now it hadn’t been a farewell.

  I climbed the rostrum.

  Afterwards, I drifted through the gardens quite spent, and yet thrumming with so much adrenalin that I couldn’t rest. Paper napkins fluttered in the grass like tropical flowers. I heard the sound of a car coming along the driveway. Shading my eyes against the sun’s glare reflected off the windscreen, I saw a taxi. I walked over as it pulled up outside the front door. The driver hopped out and jogged round to help the passenger. He eased himself out and with some effort stood, leaning against the car, slowly taking in the streamers festooning the trees and the scattered glassware.

  ‘Hello, Fox,’ said Jack. ‘I seem to have missed a party.’

  We sat in Jack’s old bedroom with the television, perched on the chest of drawers, displaying nothing but static.

  ‘Whack it again, Fox,’ he said.

  ‘I’m trying,’ I grumbled, repositioning the aerial for the umpteenth time.

  The picture swam back into clarity. I settled back onto the chair. Jack lay in his bed, an oxygen cylinder beside him. Every now and again he took a puff.

  ‘You sound as if you’re smoking a Gauloise,’ I said.

  ‘Goodness, I do fancy a cigarette. You couldn’t get me one, could you? It’s not as if it could do me any harm.’

  ‘It would blow us up. You’re sitting beside an oxygen cylinder.’

  ‘You always were a swot.’

  ‘I’m not. That’s simple common sense.’

  We paused, Jack to catch his breath, and me to savour the pleasure of bickering with him.

  ‘How long have I got?’ he asked.

  ‘Surely the doctors told you—?’

  He smiled. ‘No. How long do I have in which to shuffle off, before the movers get here?’

  I looked at him in surprise. I’d not confessed that I’d sold the house.

  ‘A good few weeks. No hurry.’

  ‘Excellent. I never like to be rushed. Not over dinner. Not over dying.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Don’t be such a drip, Fox.’

  I glanced at my watch and turned up the volume on the television. It was the finals of the Young British Musician of the Year competition. The cameras panned across the families.

  ‘Clara looks lovely,’ he said. ‘She’s a pretty girl. I can’t fathom why that idiot husband left her.’

  ‘No. But I think finally she’s rather happier without him.’

  We watched as Clara fidgeted and reached for Lucy’s hand. Annabel and Katy sat beside them. The girls had come to watch Robin – I wondered whether they thought the disruption to their own childhoods had been worth it. The cameras held on them, slicing Ralph in half at
the edge of the shot. I knew Clara would have preferred him not to come. As Katy leaned in to whisper something to her sister, the camera cut back to the presenter.

  ‘Turn it down until Robin’s on,’ said Jack. ‘I can’t bear all that waffle they spout.’

  ‘We need to hear the other performers.’

  ‘Do we? I don’t see why. I’m only interested in Robin,’ said Jack.

  I started to grumble, but decided it was bad form to argue with a dying man. Instead I set out a picnic on the bedspread. Pâté de foie gras from Fortnum’s. Smoked salmon and caviar. A bottle of Grand Cru Chablis ’99. I poured Jack a glass and we watched in silence as a girl of seventeen or eighteen strode into shot, holding her violin and exuding confidence. As she began to play, she plied her bow with dazzling ease and smoothness. I tried to work out what piece she was playing from her movements but I couldn’t.

  ‘Can’t I turn on the sound? She looks jolly good.’

  ‘No you can’t.’

  ‘Why not? This is silly.’

  ‘It isn’t. I told you. I don’t care about the others. Besides, irritating you is tremendous fun. Like foie gras, it’s a pleasure I’ve not indulged in for a while.’

  I sighed and topped up my wine glass.

  ‘I listened to him every day, you know,’ said Jack.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Robin. On the pianola. I had them put it on every lunchtime. The others all got heartily sick of it. I didn’t. I ate my chopped salad and listened to him play. It was extremely pleasant. Then the pianola stopped working. Or so they said. One of those chirpy buggers probably complained to management. In any case they got shot of it.’

  He closed his eyes briefly and took a few gasping breaths, then opened them and smiled.

  ‘I wanted to hear him again. He’s better than you ever were.’

  ‘Infinitely better. I wasn’t much good at all.’

  We squabbled amiably through the programme. Robin was the last to perform.

  ‘Look. Here he comes. Turn it up,’ demanded Jack, struggling to sit up against his pillows.

  I turned up the volume on the television set and sat back in my chair. I felt horribly sick. I had rarely suffered from nerves like this before any of my own performances. Robin was head and shoulders smaller than the other performers; he looked very young and an unhealthy shade of green. He was going to play Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2. At first he’d wanted Rachmaninov or Beethoven but I’d pushed for the Chopin. This was a young man’s piece written before the composer himself was twenty. Robin had a lifetime for the magnitude of Beethoven, and I knew that the poetry and fluidity of the Chopin would suit him. What it lacked in formal sophistication, it made up for in emotion and charm. Robin had eventually acquiesced. Like a Savile Row tailor who has an eye for the best cut and fabric to flatter a man, I possessed a knowing ear. I understood which piece was the best for a performer – especially one I knew as well as Robin.

  ‘You could have gone to London to watch,’ said Jack, quietly. ‘You didn’t have to stay with me.’

  ‘If he doesn’t win, I’ll go next year.’

  Jack waved at me to be quiet. The conductor signalled to the orchestra, and then, after a minute, Robin began to play. The dark bedroom filled with colour that poured from the television set in waves, the music painting the walls with russets and golds and circles of light.

  It wasn’t Chopin.

  It was me.

  And yet it was also Robin. He played my piano symphony Robin and Edie and shaped it with his own voice. I heard him talking to me through the music, laughing with me at its little musical jokes. I’d created a musical world and he was revelling in it, delighting in the shades, rushing here and there and calling me to follow, saying, ‘Listen, listen to what we can do.’ All his awkwardness had gone. He was unconcerned by the audience. I heard my world through his ears and it was marvellous.

  In the second movement he played the uncanny Yiddish melody, his fingers tapping its swaying cadence, until I heard women humming in the Eastern ghettos, carrying their pots of cholent, steam hissing in the cold. Robin called to me but also to his grandmother. I heard Edie not only in the folk tune but also in his distinctive phrasing. He didn’t have her eye colour or her laugh or her dark hair but he sounded like her. In the music, the three of us were united. My God, I thought, through this music he knows her.

  The piano carried us across Hartgrove Hill, pushing further east until the bluebell woods were draped with snow and the trees with hoarfrost. In the darkness of the undergrowth a white wolf watched us with yellow eyes. As Robin played, the song made a forest grow that was both Dorset and Russia, the air resonating with old English and Yiddish tunes.

  Afterwards, as he bowed, small and sweating from his exertions, the camera scanned across Clara, Lucy, Annabel, Katy and Ralph, all clapping and shouting. Jack and I shouted too, whooping our approval at the television set.

  ‘What’s next?’ said Jack, applauding.

  ‘The judges debate and then announce the winner.’

  ‘Of course Robin’s won. He’s the best I’ve heard all night.’

  I did not remind him that Robin was the only musician he’d heard all night. There was some dreary chit-chat with the presenters while the judges retired to discuss their verdict. We polished off the rest of the Chablis.

  ‘They’re back,’ said Jack. ‘Turn it up.’

  The blonde presenter preened. She’d reapplied her lipstick, I noted. A paper was passed to her. She beamed at the cameras.

  ‘And this year’s Young British Musician of the Year, 2007, is awarded to David Julyan, Bassoon.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Jack. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  I felt a wave of dizziness. I couldn’t understand it. The camera lingered briefly on the winner before panning across the losing musicians. I saw Clara and Annabel trying to console Robin, who, noticing the camera upon him, showed it his middle finger and mouthed a very rude word.

  ‘I think we may need to work on his gracious-in-defeat face somewhat,’ I said, rubbing my forehead.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ said Jack. ‘I think it’s jolly refreshing.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sorry he didn’t win. At least this way you can go to London and see him win next year.’

  I turned off the television set and closed my eyes, grateful for the silence and relieved for once that I was not there to face Robin’s fury and anguish.

  ‘He’s not quite twelve. The winner’s nearly eighteen. He won’t see that, though.’

  I wanted to telephone Clara. I wanted to tell her that the competition didn’t matter a jot. That it would be all right. That it was all worth it. The unpleasantness and the drives to London at four in the morning, the missed netball matches and the intermittent fury of her daughters, the spoiled marriage and the lack of family holidays. The boy was a revelation but, more importantly, he’d found how to open up his music, just a chink, but wide enough to allow us to slide inside. It was the closest I’d ever come to believing that he would succeed in making music not only his life but his living.

  I glanced over at Jack. His eyes were closed, and if it wasn’t for the faint movement of his eyelids I would have thought him asleep. I placed the oxygen mask over his mouth, and for once he did not object. He must be exhausted. I stood up to leave, but he reached out and caught my arm, shaking his head.

  ‘It’s all right. I’ll stay,’ I said.

  Outside the window an owl hooted at the moon.

  ‘Open the curtains,’ said Jack. ‘I want to see the woods.’

  I did as he asked, turning off the light so he could see them better. The sky was a soft grey and the willows rustled in the dark, leaves fluttering like thousands of tiny wings. The woods crouched black against the hill, coiled into the curve of the slope. Above them the jagged line of Hartgrove Ridge divided the earth from the sky.


  ‘Mummy used to walk in those woods,’ he said. ‘She was a lovely singer. Not a professional like Edie but charming. I loved it when she sang to us. You don’t remember, do you?’

  ‘No. What did she sing us, Jack?’

  ‘Oh, this and that. Lots of folk tunes. She was like you in that regard. Loved old songs. But she sang a bit of everything. There was one she particularly liked. I taught it to Edie and she used to sing it to me sometimes.’

  I stared at him through the gloom, his skin waxy and pale against the pillowcase, the bones of his skull visible just beneath the surface, but when I closed my eyes, his voice was still the same.

  ‘I would have loved to hear Edie sing that,’ I said.

  ‘Didn’t she ever? It was such a silly song. About a blackbird. Or was it a nightingale? Do you know, I can’t even remember the words properly.’

  ‘No. She never did.’

  Jack made no reply, but I saw him smile in the darkness and I realised that he was pleased she hadn’t sung it to me.

  ‘I probably asked her not to. You were always on one of your song-collecting jaunts and everything you found you remade into something new, shoved it into some symphony or whatnot. I didn’t like the idea of you doing that to this. It was private.’

  I swallowed, hurt. ‘I don’t think my music is like that. I’m sorry that you do. And I wouldn’t have used it. Not if you had asked me not to.’

  He said nothing for a moment, conscious he’d offended me. ‘I could sing it to you now, if you like,’ he said softly. ‘I’m not much of a singer but I could give it a go.’

  I smiled and shook my head. ‘No. Keep it. It’s yours,’ I said.

  I wanted to hear the song very much. I had the uneasy feeling that I’d spent most of my career searching for it, whether sung by shepherds beside hedgerows or in pubs, transcribed in songbooks, or hidden amongst the fragments in my imagination. And yet now I chose not to hear it, but I would continue to imagine it. I’d taken so much from Jack, I was relieved that he could keep this.