The Song of Hartgrove Hall (13 page)

There was a pause, while we pretended to drink our tea and tried not to smile.

‘Would you like to play us something?' asked John.

Robin nodded and moved quickly to the piano, piling up his cushions. The men settled back into their chairs by the fire. Robin hesitated for a few seconds, fingers poised over the piano, and then he began.

—

‘Something a little stronger than tea, I think,' said Marcus after Robin had finished, been collected by Mrs Stroud and taken to the kitchen in search of chocolate biscuits. I produced a bottle of Scotch from my desk. We sat in silence for a few minutes, drinking and somehow still hearing the swell of music swishing through the stillness. Albert was the first to speak.

‘I'm sorry, Fox. But you can't continue to teach him piano.
You're simply not good enough. He'll pick up all manner of bad habits from you, thinking that's the way it should be done.'

Miserably, I nodded and took a long swig of whisky. My eyes burned but I hoped they'd put it down to the fumes. It was true. These fellows knew that my playing was serviceable at best.

‘What ought I to do?' I asked when I could speak.

Albert wrinkled his brow in thought. ‘I can give him the odd master class, but that's really for later on. In a year or so when he's mastered a bit more technique. He has a real instinctive emotionality that needs to be nurtured carefully. His playing is highly personal – and that's rare in such a young player. More often than not, prodigies are miraculous chameleons, borrowing other players' styles but lacking their own voice. Robin is himself.'

He paused and rubbed his forehead. ‘You need a teacher who's not only a brilliant pianist himself but experienced in teaching the very young. One mustn't interfere too much. He requires very gentle guidance.'

Marcus glanced at me. ‘You'll have to take him to London.'

Albert nodded in agreement. ‘It will almost certainly have to be London. Probably every week. Perhaps twice. There needs to be regular lessons and a stringent practice schedule. An older student I'd expect to do eight or nine hours each day. Since he's so young, it will be less but still probably three or four.'

John had said nothing but now he got to his feet, grabbed the poker and started rooting around amongst the coals. I swallowed my irritation – a man's fire is his own. No one should interfere with his host's hearth.

‘Are you quite certain that he wants that?' he asked. ‘Do his parents? Most child prodigies are washed up by the age of twelve. It's rarely worth it.'

Albert leaned back in his chair. ‘I'm afraid John's quite right. The boy is clearly exceptionally gifted. It's remarkable what he can do after a few months with frankly a rather ropy pianist as his teacher.' He smiled but only for an instant and then gave a tiny sigh. ‘But the odds are stacked against him. Even with everything we'll try to give him, he will probably never be a concert pianist. It's a shame that his passion isn't for the violin.'

We all grunted in agreement. Even if a violinist doesn't conquer the Everest of becoming a concert soloist and a virtuoso, he can still make a life of music as part of an orchestra. The pianist has no such alternative. His career opportunities are either at the summit, with world concert tours and recording contracts, or giving piano lessons to recalcitrant children. The music departments of most schools reverberate with the spoiled dreams of talented pianists who came close but not close enough.

‘I'll make some calls,' said Albert. ‘But in the meantime, you need to talk to his mother.'

I asked Clara to come for a walk. It was late February and although the morning's frost still lingered in the shade, patches of snowdrops and hordes of crocuses had emerged in compact puddles of colour. The months of dreary rain and sleet had turned the hillside a muddy brown, the grass uneven and yellowed. The trees remained bare, the fine patterns of branches against the sky reminding me of drawings of capillaries in old anatomy books. The startling purple and vivid yellow of the crocuses adorned the colourless world, reassuring me, just as I was heartily sick of the cold and rain, that spring wasn't far off. I've never been like Edie. I'm a summertime man. I hanker for blue skies and dawns lively with birds.

Clara and I walked briskly across the estate and towards the Wessex Ridgeway along the spine of hills, the trees echoing with the squabble of wood pigeons. As we climbed, the county was spread out below us in miniature, the fields a tone poem in browns and greens, here and there the flooded water meadows catching in the sunlight like molten aluminium. By silent accord we made for Ringmoor, emerging onto the hilltop like swimmers surfacing into the open air. The wind sang in the telephone wires, a perfect C sharp.

No matter how still the day, it's always windy up at Ringmoor. It's a strange place, echoing with millennia of footsteps. Iron Age workings crease the grassy downland like folds in a blanket alongside the raised outlines of a Roman village. At the boundary lie the tumbledown remains of a Victorian cottage, the assorted settlements lying on top of one another as though time has been compressed at a single point, every period in history existing all at once. The wind is loud and the boundary between the ages insubstantial.

We perched for a rest on the ruins of a flint cottage wall and Clara passed me an apple. In a habit inherited from her mother, she never ventures anywhere without pockets bulging with treats.

‘Didn't you collect songs once from the shepherd who lived up here?' she asked.

‘Yes, you're quite right. So I did. That was long ago. Before you were born.'

We were silent for a while, eating our apples. After a few minutes Clara hurled the core into a tangle of scrub that at some time must have formed part of the cottage garden, and said, ‘I liked the story of you coming up here and listening to his old songs. He'd sing them to you only at the right time of year. Wasn't that it? A song for summer? Another for winter?'

I chuckled. ‘Yes. Peculiar old fellow. I attempted to hack up
here in the snow to hear his winter song. I caught a foul cold. Was in bed for a week.'

Clara studied me for a moment. ‘Do you still collect songs?'

I closed my eyes and felt the sting of bright light against my lids. ‘Not really. I can't remember the last time I collected something new. It's terribly hard nowadays. The ancient and the wild retreat to the edge of things. The countryside is teeming and too bright at night. I remember coming up here years ago after dark when I was only a little younger than you and it was black. You have no concept of a proper—'

‘— a properly dark night. Yes. I know. You've said.'

I smiled. ‘I'm sorry, darling. You've heard all my stories before.'

‘It just seems a shame that you've given up.'

‘There aren't people left any more who sing the old songs. If they do, it's because they've learned them from a book or a CD. There weren't many such chaps around even when I was a boy. I worry that they're all extinct now.'

‘Dorset dodos.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Haven't all the songs been collected in any case?'

‘I suspect that's impossible. There's always one more song to be found.'

‘So you are still looking, then?'

I laughed. ‘You got me. Perhaps I am.'

We sat quietly for a minute, watching the cloud shadows trawl the hillside below, and listening to the melodic hum of the telephone wires.

I talked about Robin. She sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap and said nothing until I'd finished. Then she turned to me and asked, ‘But what do you think? Do you think he should stop lessons with you and go to London?'

‘I can't teach him what he needs. The teacher Albert's found at the Royal College is experienced with very young children.'

‘But travelling to London twice every week. It's a lot. Won't the lessons be awfully expensive? I mean, we'll find the money somehow . . . but what about school?'

‘They won't charge for the lessons. Or only a nominal amount.'

This wasn't true. The lessons were indeed expensive, but I'd arranged for the bills to be sent directly to me. Clara never need know.

‘And I suppose either his new school will accommodate him or somehow he'll have to be taught at home.' She kicked at a stone with her walking shoe. ‘But despite all of that he might never succeed.'

‘No. He probably won't.'

‘For God's sake, Daddy.'

‘You need to know the reality.'

‘It sounds like a lot of misery for everyone.' She paused. ‘Will it even make Robin happy?'

I told her the one thing I knew with any certainty. ‘The boy is happiest at the piano. If he has a chance of making it his life, don't we have to give it to him, even if it's only a little chance?'

Clara didn't answer. The wind buffeted the trees.

G
eorge wants to know precisely how it will happen. He's like a man whose horse needs to be shot, pleading with the veterinary surgeon for reassurance that the wretched animal won't suffer. He forces us to cycle to Turnworth where they're demolishing the old manor. Apparently it's happening to stately homes all over England. Hardly anyone can afford to keep the damn things going or make the necessary repairs after the neglect of the war years. We cycle to the top of the hill and puff along the ridge. It's a glorious day – the sky a shining cobalt blue, the hedges strewn with dog roses and honeysuckle, and the air brimming with the hum of bees. We sweat in the midday sun, feeling sympathy for the long-haired cattle huffing in the shade of a solitary beech tree beside the road. We pause briefly to fill our water bottles in a stream and pedal on through the swarms of drowsy flies, arriving at Turnworth shortly before the demolition men.

We know the house well. The General and Colonel Winters, the owner, are old pals; before the war we went there to luncheons, suppers and parties, for carol singing on Christmas Eve. It's a grand old place, much larger than ours, cradled in a chalk valley formed by Jurassic seas. It can't be seen from the road; only the curling drive is visible, and if out riding or walking you won't discover it until you're nearly on top of it. The honeyed stone seems to emerge from the hillside as if it had grown there.

I've never really thought about the manor before. It would have been like asking me whether I'd thought an aunt or a cousin attractive. Yet now, standing with Jack and George on the ridge, gazing down at the façade of mullioned
windows each reflecting a hundred suns, with the ivy creeping shyly around the porch, I appreciate that it's beautiful. I'm sure that inside the timbers are rotten, infested with dry rot and death-watch beetle, and that the roof leaks whenever it rains, but from up here, on this lazy, sun-filled afternoon, it looks perfect, as if it had always been here and as if, in the years before it was built, the valley was simply waiting for it to appear.

Men carry out the last few pieces of furniture and lay them on the lawns some distance away like corpses removed from the scene of a terrible accident. The three of us remain where we are but below us at the far end of the drive a crowd starts to form. If I squint I could probably make out the colonel, but I can't bear to look for him. Jack reaches into his jacket and produces a hip flask, opens it, knocks it back and wordlessly passes it to George, then to me. A man with a whippet by his side seems to be directing the men. It is the colonel. I've never seen him without his dog. He stores his soul in that creature.

An hour passes. George nudges me and I observe men stuffing sticks of gelly into the boreholes in the hulking outer walls, while other men ferry yet more explosive charges. A sideboard is heaved onto the lawn and dumped there beside a dining table for twenty, as though at any moment the Mad Hatter will show up with the Queen of Hearts to host a tea party amongst the roses and packing boxes. I'm sleepy from the whisky and, in all honesty, a little bored. George passes me a meat-paste sandwich. Edie made them for us. She refused to join us, telling us that we were all morbid for coming to watch this spectacle. I can't say that she was wrong – I'm still not quite sure why we're here and yet at this moment none of it seems real. We're watching what will happen to our house in a week or so but we're picnicking in glorious sunshine. A peregrine falcon soars overhead – if he sticks about, he'll have a perfect aerial view of the whole thing.

Then it's time. The colonel and his whippet walk to the far side of the garden. A man in a trilby remonstrates with the crowd, presumably asking them to leave, but they won't budge. We peer down, and I can't help my excitement. The man strides over to stand beside the colonel. By their feet is a plunger with a length of wire running to the gelly. The two men speak for a moment and I assume that the man in the trilby is asking the colonel whether he wishes to press the plunger himself, but he shakes his head. That, clearly, is a step too far.

A moment later, the other man pushes it down, quickly and firmly. Nothing happens for a minute. And then there's a boom, followed by another. And another. They rumble around the hillside and I feel it in my chest rather than hear it. And it's thrilling; blood pumps through me and I'm breathless. There's an awful exhilaration to the destruction, the boyish impulse to knock over a tower of bricks or stamp on a beetle, magnified a thousandfold. The house trembles as though the ground beneath is shaking with a terrible, terrible force. The tiles on the roof lift up, slowly, it seems, like a feather being held aloft by a funnel of breath, and the house appears to pause. For a moment I think it won't fall but then it does. All the windows shatter and the wall furthest from us topples, then the next, crashing down like vast dominoes as the charges go off one by one, until at last the entire house slumps, collapsing in on itself. The noise is catastrophic and the stillness of the afternoon is split open. A cloud of dust rises up, thick as fog, and conceals the ruins.

Jack passes me a cigarette but I wave him away, sickened at the spectacle, at myself. George looks stricken. He's a nasty greenish colour and his skin is coated with sweat.

‘Here, George, are you all right?' I ask even though it's perfectly obvious he is not.

He nods, then turns round and vomits on a patch of dandelions behind his bicycle.

‘It's the noise,' he says at last, spitting in the grass. ‘I don't like the noise.'

‘Come on, old chap,' says Jack, holding up George's bicycle, his voice gentle.

We shouldn't have come.

Edie produces a box of sugar plums and a record of the young pianist Albert Shields performing Rachmaninov. She waits until Jack and George retreat to bed before placing it on the gramophone. We sit on the worn rug in the Chinese room, our mouths sticky from sugar plums – Lord knows how she found them – and we listen. Except I don't. I only watch her listening – her rapt expression, her eyes lightly closed as though sunbathing, her skin flushed from the warmth of the fire. There is a snowfall of sugar dusting her top lip. I clench my fists to stop myself from leaning over to kiss her.

It takes a force of will not to resent Jack. I stamp on my envy as if on a swarm of wasps. I stare at the blinking embers in the grate.

‘Can I tell you something?' I ask.

‘Of course,' says Edie.

‘If we're really to give up Hartgrove, I'd like to preserve her memory through the songs I've been collecting. At least then this place will exist in music if nowhere else. But the prospect of simply sweeping up the songs into my book and keeping them as some kind of musical scrapbook of ancient England feels wholly inadequate. I have this notion of using the songs as the basis of some kind of pastoral symphony about the loss of home and of an England vanished in the war' – I falter, worried that I'm sounding grandiose, but Edie is listening with patient interest – ‘but I don't have an idea for the main theme. I think I'm probably doomed to gathering up songs
and pinning them in my wretched book like desiccating moths until I'm falling to bits myself.'

Her mouth twitches in a smile, but she doesn't laugh. ‘Perhaps you'll discover the theme in a song you've yet to find.'

I nod but really I'm terribly afraid that I won't ever experience that feverish surge of creativity.

‘Most composers have been at it for a decade by the time they are my age,' I say, trying not to sound peevish. ‘Think of Mozart and Delius and Mendelssohn.'

‘Well, don't forget Vaughan Williams. He didn't get going until he was nearly twenty-five.'

‘Oh, yes. So he didn't.'

Despair recedes a touch.

She folds her arms. ‘I should think by that reckoning you've at least three more years before we can write you off as an absolute failure and all hope is lost.'

She smiles at me with that funny lopsided smile and even though she's teasing me, I feel a ruffle of optimism.

The following day Edie takes the train back up to town for a concert, and George leaves with her, whether for business or out of squeamishness in not wanting to be here so close to the end, I'm not sure. The morning after they depart I'm up before dawn and hurrying across the lawn before the others are awake. Knowing that in a matter of a week – no, less: six days – the house will be gone, I want it over. I'm in a prison cell, counting the hours until my execution. Afterwards, I may not go back up to Cambridge but instead venture abroad for a while. I hear there is a folk-song hoard in the Appalachian Mountains. Perhaps I will travel to the USA and gather up songs over there. And then the thought of being away from Edie makes me feel sick, like having a sudden hangover.

Farmhands have started to empty Hartgrove Hall of the few pieces of decent furniture and stack them in one of the barns. I wonder where the General will go – I presume to his occasional wartime lair, the bungalow on the other side of the hill – but I can't bring myself to ask him. I can't forgive him. He hasn't asked us where we'll go or what we'll do. In fact he carries on precisely as before, taking his breakfast with
The Times
in the morning room, Chivers bringing him coffee and rolls and marmalade from Fortnum's. He clearly intends to spend his last few days in the house as he has spent the previous sixty-eight years, barring the inconvenient interruptions brought by two world wars. For an awful moment I wonder whether he means to go down with the ship, sitting at the breakfast table with his newspaper and his jar of marmalade with its silver spoon as the house falls around him, burying him in the rubble.

I want to be far away and I can't bear to leave. I walk up to the ridge as dawn breaks behind the hill, setting the gorse and the brambles ablaze for an instant. It's cool and the ground is thick with dew; thousands of spiders' webs wobble in the grass, catching the light and looking like the corners of discarded lace handkerchiefs. As I hurry up the steep slope, I realise that I've spent the last few days tramping my favourite walks, bidding them goodbye. The routes I've taken to collect songs in pubs and farm cottages have corresponded exactly with an internal map of the places I love the most. I've been walking the path of my own memories, and, if I think about it, I could trace the last few days by singing the songs I've collected along the way – ‘The Foggy Dew' from a gardener unearthing rows of wet brown carrots at the rectory in Belchalwell, through ‘The Banks of Sweet Primrose' sung by a pair of labourers burning a pyre of dung at Hedge End, to ‘The Spotted Cow' sung by the curate of Woolland, red faced and fastidiously removing his dog collar before he'd sing such an irreverent tune.

I've created an elaborate song map of Hartgrove, of her hills and barrows and dells and woods. I know that, in years to come, I can find my way here again by singing. Perhaps it's the impending grief of losing our home, but I find myself retreating from the rational and into myth. I hoard songs and stories, visions of a better, older world. I don't know whether they were ever true, these ballads of clear crystal streams and weeping birds, but I wish I could slide inside a song and escape there for the duration of the melody.