The Song of Hartgrove Hall (18 page)

I sigh, take another swig of whisky and try another tack. ‘So we don't know what's the best thing for the land on the hill? Well, we simply need to listen to some old songs from around here. If we listen properly, they'll tell us what to do.'

I can tell from his expression that George remains sceptical but I've drunk enough whisky to believe in my own extrapolations.

‘The memory is in the melody. If we find songs gathered from right here we'll find out what the farmers used to do on the hillside.'

‘So if they sing of sheep, we keep to sheep. If it's a vineyard they mention, we plant grapes.'

‘Exactly. Well. Grapes might be more of a metaphor.'

‘We'll plant metaphorical grapes, then. White or red?'

‘You can rag me all you like, but you say that you want to listen to the land. So listen to the music. These songs are from here and are about here and they've been sung for longer than there've been bloody Fox-Talbots in Hartgrove Hall.'

George surveys me with amusement, which thoroughly incenses me.

‘I can't think why you're being so obstinate about it. You're the one trying to find out how everything was done a hundred bloody years ago. Everyone else is tipping on sodding nitrates and maximising yields while we're raking up chicken shit.'

‘And cow shit.'

‘And pig and horse. But my point is that you don't want to increase mechanisation. You don't want fancy tractors and sprays. You say that the connection to the land matters and without it something is lost.'

‘I do,' says George, eyeing me curiously.

‘Music is the same thing. The songs are connected to the land. They're all part of the great dance.'

I'm feeling quite pleased with myself when I give an enormous hiccup, which I fear rather undercuts the impact. George smiles. ‘I would like to bury that government leaflet on fertilisers and whatnot under the chicken coop.'

I jump to my feet. ‘Yes. Let's do it. Let's bury the bloody thing.'

Five minutes later, we're shoving the latest government-issued whatnot into the midst of the vast, wobbling muckheap, a veritable Eiffel Tower of dung. I reach for a match but George holds back my arm.

‘Steady on, old thing. Methane. Horribly flammable. Don't need to blow the place sky high after all.'

‘No. Perhaps not.'

Swaying, I grasp the whisky bottle. I sip and pass it to George.

‘I hear you at night, you know,' I say. ‘Your room's above mine and I hear you walking about.'

‘Oh, sorry about that, old chap. Always been a bit restless in the wee hours.'

‘No you haven't. We used to share a room, remember.' I take the bottle back from him. ‘When I can't sleep, I focus on a tune and sing it in my head. Over and over. You should try it.' I warble a simple ditty to George. ‘Sing that when you can't sleep. It'll help block out anything else.'

Whether his sleeplessness is caused by thoughts of Edie or something else, I do not enquire.

I don't remember how I found my way back inside. I wake up on the sofa and the fire has petered out but beside me there's an envelope with a little cash. On the envelope George has written, ‘Find us some songs then and a piano to bloody play them on. But I'm sure as hell not singing them.'

Edie meets me from the train. This version of her is a stranger. In her trim navy suit, curled hair and crimson lipstick she's more like the picture postcards of wartime sweetheart ‘Edie Rose' than the girl I'm used to. I'm afraid to shake her hand. She kisses me on the cheek, smearing it with lipstick that she then tries to scrub away with her handkerchief.

‘Stop, please,' I say. I don't want her pawing at me like an aunt. This isn't how I want her to think of me.

She withdraws. ‘You're not meeting Mr Kenton until six. I thought we could go and have some lunch.'

‘Splendid,' I say.

She takes me to Claridge's. It's supposed to be a great treat but I've already decided that I want to pay and Edie's pre-lunch martini costs most of the cash George has given me. I glance down at the menu. I'm hungry but everything is horribly
expensive. The room is mirrored, every surface glints and an infinite series of Harry Foxes stare back at me, foreheads glistening. I'm wearing Jack's tweed jacket but it doesn't quite fit; he's slimmer than me with shorter arms and my wrists stick out of the cuffs. By mistake I catch sight of myself in the mirrors again and see that the ill-fitting suit is worn by hundreds of fidgeting Harry Foxes.

‘This is one of Jack's favourite places to come when we're in town,' says Edie, with a hesitant smile. ‘I thought you'd probably like it too. You boys seem to have very similar tastes.'

I can't tell whether she's being arch but I doubt it. Edie's not that sort of girl. She's brought me to one of their spots and I'm still on Jack's turf even though he isn't here. I'm not surprised that Jack is so fond of it; he'll see only glittering versions of himself laughing back at him in all the blasted mirrors. I stop myself. I'm being unfair. My brother is not vain.

‘Do you come here with your family?' I ask, fishing again for titbits.

Edie roars with laughter. ‘Goodness, no.'

‘Not their scene?'

‘Definitely not.'

Her smile is still twitching; I can't think why my question was so frightfully funny. The tablecloths are perfect white snowfields. I want to put on my boots and tramp across them. Somewhere a piano plays. I relax just a little. A waiter appears.

‘May I take your order, madam?'

‘The soup and then the sole.'

‘And for you, sir?'

‘The soup.'

‘And to follow?'

‘Just the soup.'

It's the only item on the menu for less than half a guinea.

‘What a good idea,' says Edie. ‘Cancel the sole. I'll just have soup too.'

The waiter makes an elaborate crossing-out.

‘Would you like some wine?'

‘No, thank you,' says Edie quickly.

The waiter disappears. And Edie sighs and raises an eyebrow. ‘I wanted to treat you.'

‘Does Jack ever let you treat him?'

Edie gives me a look.

‘Well then.'

The waiter reappears, clutching a bottle of champagne. ‘From the ladies in the corner – “With thanks for keeping their spirits up when the chips were down.”'

An elderly woman in a fur coat blows Edie a kiss. Her lavender-haired companion claps her kid-gloved hands in mimed applause.

‘That is too kind. Please be sure to tell them “thank you”.'

We drink the champagne and eat the soup. It's a consommé, clear as glass. I eat the entire basket of bread but even then champagne bubbles are popping in my head.

‘So does this happen often?' I ask, gesturing to the bottle.

Edie shrugs and I realise that it does. I'd forgotten that she's famous. Her cheeks are flushed and I see that she's tipsy too. She starts to giggle.

‘Shall we go somewhere else?' she says. ‘Something more your scene?'

And at once I wish I had a scene. I wish I knew some down-at-heel dive where as we walked in the black piano player would nod to us without pausing in his Duke Ellington riff while the regulars all slap me on the back and my usual whisky is waiting for me on the bar.

‘Yes, let's find another place,' I say. Through the pleasant fog of champagne I've almost convinced myself that my jazz joint does exist.

I call for the bill but the waiter explains that our lady benefactors have taken care of everything.

‘Blast it,' I say, ‘I ought to have had the beef fillet after all.'

Edie giggles. ‘So they're allowed to treat you.'

I tell her to shush and she laughs again. I like making her laugh. Edie goes across to thank the ladies for their kindness, and after a minute she beckons for me to join her.

‘She's so terribly clever and such a pretty girl,' says the lady with the lilac tint in her hair. She hasn't taken off her fox fur, even though it is stifling in the dining room.

‘Will you sing us a little something?' asks her friend, in a voice that rustles like dry paper.

‘It would be a pleasure. Mr Fox-Talbot will accompany me.'

She grabs my arm and leads me to the piano, whispering, ‘Now you can find out what it's like to sing for your supper. Well, luncheon.'

‘I'm not sure I can play after all I've had to drink,' I murmur.

‘Nonsense. Now, we'll have to play one or two of the hits to keep them happy but afterwards – you choose. Surprise me.'

We play and sing for an hour. The other diners are bemused the moment we depart from the wartime medley but we don't care; we're not playing for them. Someone sends over another bottle of champagne. I've not been near a decent piano for months and I'm sloppy with joy. We try out variations of the songs I've hunted down. Sometimes I sing along and sometimes I just listen to Edie. Oh, why did Jack have to find you first?

We tumble out into the street, happy and brimming with laughter. Edie checks her watch.

‘Goodness me, it's nearly five. We need to sober you up and get you to your interview with Mr Kenton.'

She tries to straighten my tie but succeeds only in unfastening it entirely, so she drapes it over my shoulder and then
has to lean against the railings, overtaken by another fit of giggles.

‘Food,' I say. ‘We need to eat something.'

‘Soup!' says Edie. ‘I'll have the soup. Nothing but soup.'

‘Now, soup was once considered by the great French chefs to be the epitome of epicurean excellence.'

‘Say that again.'

‘Epicurean excellence.'

‘I like it when you say that.'

She's laughing up at me, teasing me, and I wonder for a second whether she's daring me to kiss her, but I know that she can't possibly be, and then she's away, running along the street. A street vendor is hawking small orange cakes.

‘I want a cake!' she says. ‘You have to buy me one.'

I buy her one and she eats it in two bites. I buy her another and she wolfs that too.

‘What I really want is a bagel but you can't get those in the posh parts of London.'

‘A what?'

‘A bagel,' she says. ‘They're what we ate at home. The best thing in the world. My grandmother and I would wait for hours in a queue for them at the bakery on Finchleystrasse. During the war I'd take her back nylons and packets of smoked salmon. After the first time, she told me to leave the nylons and bring more salmon. That's what she said she missed about Russia. Proper winters and smoked fish.'

I don't say anything, hoping she'll carry on, but she doesn't, just grins and says again with a groan, ‘I could murder a bagel.'

‘It sounds wonderful.'

‘You're such a classy fellow, you don't even know what a bagel is.'

‘A classy fellow who couldn't afford to buy you a proper lunch.'

‘You're posh but poor. Poor for now. People like you are never poor for long.'

‘People like me?' The champagne is wearing off and I'm a little put out.

‘You don't know what it's like to have nothing. To be invisible. Either you'll save your nice house or you won't. If you don't, your father will sell it and Jack will inherit any cash his father doesn't run through. And even if there isn't any left, Jack will end up all right. The Jack Fox-Talbots of the world always do.'

There's a bitterness in her voice that I don't recognise. I wonder whether she's as drunk as she seems, or whether she's using it as an excuse to express how she really feels.

‘Is that why you're marrying him?' I say quietly.

She looks at me quizzically, her head on one side. ‘What a thing to ask, Fox.'

We walk slowly to the tube, neither of us speaking for a minute or two.

‘You don't know what it is, to be someone like me and to be loved by someone like him.'

I want to ask her what the devil she means and then I feel a trickle of hope: she hasn't said she loves him.

—

I'm more nervous than I like to admit. I really want this piano. The last of the champagne bubbles have burst on the walk to Cecil Sharp House. I've refastened my tie and attempted to smooth my hair, and I take long gulps of cool, late-autumn air but here in the city it tastes gritty and unclean. We skirt Regent's Park. The air-raid shelters haven't been dismantled and squat amongst flower beds brimming with bedraggled geraniums and dahlias. Cecil Sharp House is a large red-brick building on the edge of Primrose Hill; it's streaked with soot and the window frames are flaking, flecks
of paint falling to the ground like dandruff. Edie ushers me inside. It's colder inside than out and the place smells familiarly of damp.

‘Mr Kenton did say that he'd be here,' says Edie, peering around the brown-painted hallway.

It's deserted. This building is the repository of English folk songs, and I picture them huddled in the library like a vast host of sparrows, all poised to sing. We open doors but the place is quite empty. Edie opens the final door to reveal a vast wood-panelled room with a great vaulted ceiling, again painted in shades of brown. The last of the evening light streams through the double-height windows, setting the walls aglow. A man sits alone at a single desk, manuscript paper spread before him.