The Song of Hartgrove Hall (45 page)

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.

He appeared to fall asleep for a few minutes and then woke again, coughing. I helped him to some water.

‘Did you videotape Robin's bit?' he asked after a minute.

‘Of course.'

‘Play it again.'

I rewound the cassette, then we sat and listened again as Robin created a world out of the void. From silence, followed by the static of the television set, came his glorious piano playing, conjuring order and magnificence. I saw the woods outside, both real and imagined through my music, one imposed upon the other, and I felt time stretch like a rubber band. I heard the layers in the music and, within Robin's playing, I listened to other melodies as well as the memories held
within them. I heard the ghosts in the music of our other, younger selves.

‘You'll bury me in the wood next to George, won't you?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

He closed his eyes. ‘I can't understand why Edie didn't want to be there too. It's where she ought to be. We all loved her, in our way. Even George.'

‘I know. I was cross about it for a long time. But the thing is, Edie wasn't quite one of us. She felt the call of home, but hers wasn't here. Or not entirely. I like to think that she's in the woods anyway in the voice of the birds.'

I adjusted Jack's pillow, trying to prop him up to make his breathing easier.

‘The soul is said to fly north, after death,' I said. ‘That's without doubt the direction Edie's would have taken, flying into colder and colder realms, towards the creak of ice and the quiet snow.'

Jack coughed. ‘Bloody hell. Mine's not. I'm going south. Back to Florida.'

The music stopped and I looked across at Jack, still and white.

‘Do you need more morphine?'

‘I can manage. I am cold, though. All that talk of ruddy ice.'

I pulled back the covers and slid into bed beside him, reaching for his hand, feeling its thinness. We lay there side by side in the dark, our ears ringing with music. Tomorrow I would be alone but that was tomorrow and not tonight.

A
row of dancers sleep under the beech trees. I'm not entirely sure whether their exhaustion is due to the sunshine, last night's performance or the party afterwards, strains of which floated up to our bedroom until after four. The General was aghast to discover several empty vodka bottles amongst the marigold pots on the loggia this morning. It's taken all of Edie's gentle diplomacy to soothe him and settle him back in the library with yesterday's newspaper.

The General can no longer cope with surprises. He reads yesterday's copy of
The Times
, reassured that it contains nothing so terrible that civilisation will not continue tomorrow. He misses Chivers and, since his old friend's death, he appears to have shrunk, bemused at the passing of his world. The modern one – filled with musicians and dancers who carouse and fill his flowerpots with empty bottles and who fail to understand the proper deference due to a man such as he – puzzles and frightens him. We keep him away from the concert-goers and the performers as much as we can. He enjoys visits from his granddaughter but can't fathom how Edie manages without a nanny, nor can he condone the fact that Clara is permitted to live downstairs when there is a perfectly decent nursery in the attic – which there is, although it is currently filled with most of the Bolshoi corps de ballet.

It's nearly five o'clock and the sun has dried the ground so that the edges of the lawns are cracked and hard, as threadbare and brown as worn carpet. The purple buddleias fill the afternoon with the scent of honey so that the garden smells like a Parisian patisserie. A smooth grass snake lies coiled on
the path, its skin liquid and gleaming like molten metal. I step around him, unwilling to disturb his snooze.

I like this moment, this lull before the flurry of the evening's preparations. Soon someone will be unable to find her costume for Act Three, and Edie will search for half an hour until we discover it was sent to Wardrobe to be mended, and then one of the violins on the third desk will be found sobbing in the potting shed, lovelorn for a cellist.

‘Here you are,' says Edie. ‘I've been looking for you.'

‘Oh dear. What now?'

‘Oh nothing really. George says the strawberries are nearly over. He's brought some from the patch at the bungalow but we'll need to buy them in for next week.'

‘Shall we have a drink? I think there's time before the chaos is scheduled.'

Edie smiles, creases appearing by her eyes, and she sits heavily in a chair. Her feet are noticeably swollen. She's almost seven months pregnant. I kiss her on the forehead, which is slightly damp.

‘Wait here, darling, you look absolutely fagged.'

I reappear a minute later with two glasses. Gratefully she takes a sip and glances at me suspiciously.

‘There's the merest dash of gin. Medicinal.'

She laughs and closes her eyes. ‘I ought to bathe Clara and find her some supper.'

‘I'll do it. You have a rest. Go and lie under the trees with the dancers.'

She frowns. ‘I feel like the matron of a boarding school. They're constantly switching bedrooms. I've absolutely no idea what's going on up there.'

There's a shriek and then Clara appears on the terrace, hands on her hips. She's a sturdy girl of nearly four, bossy and buzzing with opinions.

‘I was looking for you and you weren't there,' she says to Edie, full of accusation.

‘Here I am, darling. Did you want something?'

‘Yes. You need to watch me. I'm a sylph.'

Edie and I do not meet one another's eye in order not to laugh. Anything less sylphlike than our podgy-legged, round-cheeked daughter is hard to imagine. A kindly member of the corps de ballet has neatly braided her yellow hair into two fat plaits. From the house, we hear the orchestra rehearsing snatches of the overture from
Giselle.
We sit back on the terrace and watch as Clara bounds across the lawn, twisting and flopping utterly out of time with the music.

‘It's remarkable. She has no sense of rhythm at all,' says Edie, quietly, smiling.

‘Absolutely none. It's a wonder to behold.'

Clara thuds to a stop and squats in a curtsey.

‘Well done, darling,' says Edie.

Clara beams at us, her eyes the same summer blue as her uncle Jack's. I gaze at her and I can't help but wonder for a moment. I shake away the thought.

‘Look, a dragonfly!'

She points with a short finger at the hovering insect, its wings beating. In the sunlight it glints green and blue like a ribbon of spilled petrol. She pursues it through the rose beds, trampling fallen petals into mush.

‘Come on, darling, suppertime,' I call.

The orchestra strikes up again and Clara is whirling round and round on the lawn, a blonde blur amongst the white daisies.

‘One more song, Daddy,' she shouts as she spins. ‘There's time for one more
song.'