The Song of Hartgrove Hall (15 page)

We are dismissed. Chivers opens the door for us, and we retreat to the frigid drawing room, as men are supposed to do, instead of to the cosiness of the kitchen, not wishing to invoke the General's disapproval today at least. We sit. We fidget. I try to write but I'm restless and unhappy and that sense of glorious certainty has dissipated like sunshine into rain. Jack smokes. My jealousy of him ebbs momentarily as I wonder vaguely about how the General will react to the news of the new lady of Hartgrove being a singer and an entertainer. Perhaps her fame will ease the shame.

Days come and go. The General gives us no answer. Chivers remains perfectly inscrutable and offers no indication one way or the other. Early one morning I find George burning the corpses of half a dozen rabbits beside the stables.

‘It's a sacrifice,' he says before I even have a chance to ask. ‘Highland fellow in my regiment told me it's what they do up north. A great house must have a great sacrifice. Thought it was worth a go.'

I cough, spluttering on the stink of burning fur. ‘Rabbits? Not much of a sacrifice, though, are they? Stringy little things.'

George looks worried. ‘Blast it. You're probably right. I should find something bigger. A deer should do it.'

‘Don't you dare,' I tell him. ‘If you shoot venison and burn it rather than serving it up to the General, you'll be hindering our cause, not helping it.'

He gives a rueful smile. ‘I suppose you're right. Anyway, the old ways of Scotland probably don't hold much sway across the border.'

I make no further comment but study George with some concern. I'm sure that, before the army, he smiled more. At night, I hear him walking up and down in his room above mine, his footsteps creaking along the floorboards.

I wonder whether I should leave. Find somewhere quiet and with a decent piano where I can try to write while I still can. Then Edie arrives back at the Hall and I'm stuck in quicksand.

I make notes for my composition but I can't even get a fix on the main theme. I need a piano to try it out on but the one in the drawing room has finally surrendered to the damp. When I sit down to play, a dozen keys ping off as my fingers touch them and spray onto the floor like an old woman spitting out a mouthful of loose teeth. Disgusted, I close the lid. I'm reduced to sitting at the piano and trying to work through the melody by tapping it out on the lid but it's quite hopeless. I take a cigarette from Jack and watch from the window as the rain moves across the hills.

‘Do either of you know the least thing about farming?' I ask.

‘The least thing,' says Jack. ‘But I have an unwavering belief in myself.'

‘George?'

‘I thought I might take a course,' he says, emerging from his seed catalogue. ‘And I remember some things.'

‘Oh God,' I say. And I wonder whether perhaps it would be for the best if the General rejects our plan and the old gal is put out of her misery quickly with a touch of dynamite.

I'm tired. Ghosts of the melodies rush through my dreams, but when I wake and try to pin them on the page, they've gone again. Instead of sleeping, I lie awake and think of Edie. It's a terrible thing to covet your brother's girl. I suppose the only thing worse is to covet your brother's wife. They have not said when they will marry and I do not ask. I tell myself that it will be on some distant date and the wedding may, in fact, never even take place. I try not to watch her, but she's my compass point. When she's in the room, I know where she is and what she's doing – finding a record for the ancient gramophone, hunting for her spectacles so she can sit at the bureau and answer letters.

She sees me fumbling a tune on the piano lid.

‘What on earth are you doing?'

I open the piano and show her the ruined instrument.

She sighs. ‘What a pity. She must have been a beauty once.'

I'm struck with nostalgia. Edie's right, this piano was young once and couples danced to her music. It's not the piano's fault that she decayed in this damp and mouldering house. I'm frightened that, if I stay, I'll end up like the piano.

‘What are you trying to play?' she asks.

Instinctively, I clutch the manuscript pages to my chest. I can't bear for anyone to look until I'm finished but Edie prises them from my grasp.

‘It's the main theme for the orchestral piece I'm sketching. I can't get the phrasing right. I just can't hear it.'

‘Give me a C.'

I hum it for her and then she sings carefully through the melody. At once I hear the error.

‘Wait a tick.'

I mark in the changes.

‘Try now.'

She sings again, and I feel a flutter in my chest. Yes.

‘That's it.'

I'm taken aback by how good it sounds.

‘It's peculiar, plaintive and yet it sticks with you. I rather like it. Reminds me a bit of Butterworth but it's different,' says Edie.

As the others chatter, I withdraw to the chill of the morning room to write. Now, I hear her voice singing the melody and I start to work in earnest.

In the coming days I alternate between writing music and pining for Edie, listening with some resentment to Jack's cheerful complaints about the endless summer rain. I think I would be less miserable about her, I decide, if I wasn't still a virgin. I really ought to drown my sorrows in other women. Cambridge is full of women who're broad-minded about sex. Or so I've heard. I've never actually met such a woman in Cambridge and now, I suppose, utterly depressed, I never will.

Coming into the drawing room, I look out to see that Hartgrove Hill has vanished entirely into the mist but I still feel its pull. Anyone born in its shadow is caught, so they say. I know that during the war years, when I was away at school surrounded by the pretty orderliness of Windsor town, I found myself walking the Ridgeway at night. I wonder whether Jack and George dreamed of it while in Egypt or Poland.

I turn away and sit beside George who stares fixedly at a guide to soil types.

The door opens. The General appears.

‘A decision has been made,' he announces as though it were from a committee of twelve rather than himself. We rise like prisoners awaiting sentence.

‘You have one year to run the estate.'

George splutters in rage. ‘One year? Quite impossible. How can we repair a generation of neglect in a single year? You might as well blow up the damn place right away.'

‘Well, if that's what you prefer,' replies the General coolly. ‘Otherwise you may have a year. The decision is Jack's. It's his inheritance.'

Jack glances at George, silently urging him to contain his fury. ‘We'll take the year, Father.'

Our father turns to look at me. He studies me with quiet interest. ‘And you, Little Fox? You really want to be part of this scheme?'

I feel my brothers watching me. I swallow, feeling cold patches of sweat bloom beneath my shirt. ‘Yes, sir. I do.'

So this is it then. It's to be the house rather than music. I'm terribly glad and desperately miserable all at once. I wonder whether I shall ever finish my symphony. With a pang, I realise I really shall miss my Cambridge chums. They're decent sorts and one or two of them are decent enough musicians. Perhaps one day I'll tempt them down to wassail the hedgerows.

‘Well then.' The General checks his watch. ‘Time to dress for dinner.'

We haven't dressed for dinner since the war but no sooner is the General out of the room than a gong booms through the house. I'd forgotten all about it. In the years before the war that gong governed us all. Several evenings each week during the school holidays I was permitted to dine downstairs. The dampening effect of the General's presence ensured it was a rather subdued affair but I always looked forward to it on account of the dining-room puddings –
infinitely better than those served in the nursery. The gong calls again, at once deep and bright, reverberating through the hall, up the stairs and through the attics until I see its sound flying out of the chimney in a volley of crimson sparks. We are here. We are awakened, it cries. I see in the shining faces of my brothers that they believe in its music. I smile and hope for their sakes.

—

Dinner is jollier than I'd expected. Three of Edie's friends arrive by train and Chivers is forced to re-lay the table for eight. I think they've had a drop of grog in the dining car on the way down, as they arrive pink-cheeked and giggling.

‘This is Josie, Betty and Sal,' says Edie, pulling them into the blue drawing room, her arm linked through theirs, a paper chain of girls. They glance about them, ogling the ornate cornicing, the tattered blue silk wallpaper, the plaster birds in flight across the improbably high ceiling. Despite the decay, nothing can hide the elegant proportions of the room, the pleasing symmetry. The floorboards are oak, broad, thick and ancient.

‘Delighted to meet you all,' says Jack, kissing each of them on the cheek and making them giggle louder still.

‘Yes, quite,' says the General, not looking delighted in the least.

George blinks, nods and retreats to the fire, which to my relief has been lit. The smell of smoking logs now wars with the pervasive odour of damp.

Edie catches my hand and draws me to the trio of girls – their hair is the exact same shade of blonde. As they continue to tremble with laughter, they remind me of a clump of shaking yellow daffodils.

‘And this is Little Fox, whom I've been telling you about,' she says with a smile.

‘Doesn't look so little to me,' says Josie, though it might be Betty.

‘Pleased to meet you.' I offer my hand and they shake it in turn with pious formality. I know they're teasing me.

‘You're the musical one. The singer,' says Josie, though again it might be Betty.

‘I can hold a tune but I'm afraid that I'm no singer. And you, ladies? Are you also singers?'

‘We can hold a tune,' says Sal archly, the youngest of the three and, going by her accent, American. I've not met an American woman before and she's imbued with instant glamour. Her dark eyebrows war with the yellow of her hair.

Edie whispers some remark and the three women are awash with laughter once again. The General clutches his whisky glass so tightly that I wonder it doesn't shatter. Edie, slight, dark, reserved, is nothing like these girls but she seems perfectly at ease and unembarrassed. Although she notices the General's displeasure, it does not concern her and I'm awed. If it's possible, I adore her even more.

‘We've performed around the world together,' Edie says, quietly.

‘Though I'm afraid we're not such a class act as Edie here,' adds Sal, giving Edie's arm a little squeeze. She surveys the room with frank curiosity. ‘I've never been to a house like this before. It's awful big. And awful cold.' She rubs her thin arms. ‘Can't you heat it right?'

As the General pales at her American audacity, Jack throws back his head and roars with laughter. ‘No, my dear girl, we can't. We're terribly poor.'

‘No you're not,' says Sal, with a hint of steel. ‘You ain't got enough ready money is all. Don't mistake that for being poor.'

I smile and decide that I like Sal very much. Edie catches my eye and I wink. Tonight isn't going to be as frightful as I'd feared. It might even be fun.

Dinner is a hoot. The girls can send up anyone or anything. They're perfect mimics. Sal, skinny and bright as a polished sixpence, can do a brilliant Churchill. She leans forward and frowns, her shrill, girlish voice becoming the familiar growl, and she wobbles her jowls. I glance at the General, who's quite forgotten to disapprove. George is quiet but he looks happy for the first time I can remember.

The food is pleasant – the best that can be said of anything that has appeared from the kitchen in the last several months – and the wine excellent. That's one thing about the General: he's never mean with his cellar. With a nod and a murmur, Chivers reappears again and again with bottle after bottle.

When the pudding has been cleared away, Edie stands. ‘Come along, ladies, let's leave the gentlemen to their brandy.'

Sal pouts. ‘I'm very partial to a brandy.'

‘Come,' says Edie, more sharply, and they follow her to the drawing room with only a warble of reluctance.

After they leave, the dining room is abruptly silent. All the warmth and humour have been extinguished. We sit and clasp our glasses, feeling dull and uneasy. I wonder how long the General will force us to remain here. Long enough to punish us for the unexpected guests, I presume.

‘So you're to marry the little Jewess,' he remarks to Jack.

Jack flinches. I stare at him and then look away.

I didn't know Edie was Jewish. I wonder how on earth the General can tell. I conjure her face in every detail, scrutinising her for hidden exoticism. I can't find any. I'm stung that she hasn't told me herself. I thought we were pals, she and I. Then perhaps she presumed I knew and maybe it's the sort of thing that I ought to have known all along. I feel terribly stupid. Naively, I realise now, I'd imagined all Jews to be like the bearded fellows in tall black hats I've glimpsed occasionally on trips to London. I don't think I know any other Jews apart
from Edie. Then I wonder whether I actually know heaps of them and have simply been unaware.