The Song of Hartgrove Hall (17 page)

George and I harvest a small field of potatoes. It's a sweaty and filthy task and after eight hours the palms of our hands are blistered, but even with the assistance of two chaps from the village – the only labourers we can afford – our progress is paltry. It's too hot, and the dust and muck dry our throats. My fingertips bleed, the blood running into the mud.

And yet there is a satisfaction to the work. The rhythms come back to me, as familiar as a tune, forgotten for a while and then heard again suddenly, unexpectedly, out of the mouth of a different singer. We spent our childhoods in these fields, these woods. I'm ten again, returned to glorious August days, warm and blue. We rise at dawn and fall into bed as the moon rises above Hartgrove Hill. I sing work tunes as we bend and sift. We ignore the gong and we do not dress for dinner.

George never seems to tire. He learns fast. As I watch, he seems to ripen and grow as quickly as a cricket willow, only thicker and more solid. I like to watch him work. He moves through the fields, stooping to fasten bales of hay, and hoisting them up on his shoulders with the smoothness of a dancer, while I sweat and Jack pants in the shade. George is not an elegant man. He's tall and broad, and he fidgets as though his skin is a size too big, but outside under the sky and the broad back of the hill, he's at ease. His reserve fits out here; the starlings and the wood pigeons and the wind through the leaves make enough noise. Lost and uneasy amidst drawing-room small talk, George is the quiet and steady centre here amongst the hedgerows and the winding streams.

In the evenings we all gather with bottles of wine filched from the cellar and laze in the garden, watching the bats drift out of the eaves, listening to George. He knows how he wants the estate to be.

‘A house like this should provide work for the village. We should be self-sufficient. The restoration needs to be careful. She needs to be nursed back to health but we have to listen to what she's telling us. And we need money for more sheep.'

‘And some cows.'

‘Definitely some cows. Lots of cows.' He smiles, not minding our ribbing any more.

The moon is full and high, its light weird and blue, making the lime trees cast shadows on the grass. We all lie back on the lawn, which is now cool and damp. Sal's head rests on my thigh and I see Edie curled against Jack. We smoke cigarettes and whisper. I watch the coil of black woods on the hillside; in the gloom they look like the fur of an animal, crouched and waiting.

‘Sing something, Fox,' says Edie, reaching over to me.

I choose an old song about grief and faithless lovers and the foggy, foggy dew. After a line or two Edie sings with me and our voices drift through the dark. When we stop she sings another. It's an unfamiliar tune, and I listen acutely, memorising it. I don't recognise the words but I feel the sadness in the melody, sharp as wild mint.

—

George shows Jack and me how to drive the aged and cantankerous tractor around the yard. We take on another labourer from the village for the month and, between us, we manage pretty well. I like best to work at night, trundling up and down the fields, the tractor put-putting beneath the stars, the sliced soil glistening like broken glass. The harvest moon is like
something from a painting, huge and orange, strung too low. On these nights we need no other light and I drive without headlamps, jolting across the ground, the wheels spitting up dirt and flint, jagged as splinters of bone.

Once we've gathered in the wheat, separated the chaff and baled up the straw, we start to burn the stubble at night, making the darkness crackle and turn red. George gets too close and singes his eyebrows.

The summer fades. As if a great door had been left open, the heat disappears in a rush, and one morning we rise to find the grass powdered with early frost. Golden leaves line the garden paths and freckle the lawns. Next comes the rain, turning the churned soil into mud. Edie and Sal evidently decide that they've had enough: they take a train to London for the afternoon but don't come back. A cable arrives before supper: REDISCOVERED JOY OF HOT BATHS STOP STAYING IN TOWN STOP SORRY STOP.

I should be glad that Edie has gone for a while – without her, Jack is almost his old self with George and me – but I am not. The house is the wrong kind of quiet. When she leaves so does any chance of music. The gates at the top of the hill by Ringmoor are rotten and need replacing but I can't help Jack with them as I promised. I'm a drunkard who needs a tipple.

In desperation I go to church for evensong. Not because I believe that God will grant me a reprieve or the strength to endure these cravings but to listen to the organ. It's a decent instrument, installed by a musically inclined rector at his own expense fifty years ago. The building itself is small, the grey stone smudged with lichen and moss. Part of the wall surrounding the churchyard has fallen down and sheep meander irreverently amongst the tombstones. The graveyard is crowded with residents past – much busier than the village, which is inevitable, I suppose, as we all finish up there in the end.

If the vicar is surprised to see me, he's sensible enough not to comment, and I slide into a pew in the middle where I hope the acoustics will be best. But after three bars I realise that it doesn't make any difference where I sit, since the organist is astonishingly bad. It takes me the entire piece to grasp what it is that he's attempting to play. I'm desperate to leave. The vicar mumbles a greeting to the congregation and I stand, ready to slip away – but then the choir starts singing the first hymn. They're not really a choir: four large men piped like sausage meat into straining woollen suits. The hymn is unremarkable although the tune is strange. It's not from the accepted hymnal but something older. Even though the organist tries to keep up, he's the fat boy playing at tag.

‘Stop. For God's sake, just stop,' I shout to the organist.

He stops with a crash of chords but the vicar, outraged, scrambles to his feet, opening and closing his mouth like a fish. I ignore him. The choir has faltered, unsure whether my complaint was directed at them.

‘Do go on,' I say, with a wave.

They glance at one another and then at the vicar who gives a pained nod. They start again to sing. At first I'm distracted by the trite and pious Victorian lyrics, presumably written by some bespectacled parson in his tidy parsonage, but lurking beneath, like flagstones under linoleum, is a rare Lydian melody with flowing arpeggios. The men sing it well, until I don't even hear the words. I close my eyes, drunk at last.

Afterwards, I retreat quickly, in no mood to listen to the vicar's objections to my behaviour. I hurry to the pub, presuming that the chaps from the choir will be along. I'm quite correct and they appear after a few minutes.

‘Drinks for these gentlemen,' I call to the barman.

The choir nod their thanks and withdraw to a corner of the pub to drink in peace, but I pursue them.

‘You sing jolly well.'

They grunt in acknowledgement, then wait for me to leave. I do not take the hint.

‘Will you sing me something else?' I ask.

The men laugh, perfectly appalled, as if I'd asked them to strip naked. I've had a drink or three and I'm not willing to give up.

‘I collect songs. Old songs from these parts. I bet you chaps know some.'

The oldest and fattest of the men looks at me properly for the first time. He releases a tiny sigh – I'm going to be tricky to dislodge.

‘Aye. We might know some.'

‘Dad's right. We've one or two.'

The son is only marginally less round than his father. Coaxing reluctant singers into performing is an art. I can't push too hard, yet I need to show them how much I want to listen. It's a delicate balance between enthusiasm and patience. These fellows mustn't be rushed. I take out a pipe: I learned to smoke one for precisely this purpose. Slowly I fill it with tobacco and sit back on the settle. I wave the pipe with feigned ease.

‘Well, I think you're rather special and I'd love to hear you sing some of your own songs, not those religious bits and bobs, but your own music.'

They glance at one another and I know I've caught them. The fat man breaks out in a grin. ‘I'm a cup too low ter sing.'

I signal to the barman to bring another round. They drink in steady silence. I let the smoke from my pipe drift and chew the stem. It's a disgusting thing, but it helps me focus my impatience.

‘Now, how do you feel about a song or two?'

‘Aye. Best have it now, otherwise we'll be a cup too many.'

The pub is half empty but the other drinkers are quite still, all listening even though they're pretending not to. The rotund
man beats a rhythm on the table. They take a breath and they sing. The walls of the pub fall away and we're out on the bare back of the hill, the black trees behind us. I recognise this song and it's an old one, older than Hartgrove Hall. Feet stamping on stone smash through the dark.

‘Yes,' I say, ‘yes,' when they've finished. I close my eyes, draining the last drop of sound.

The fat man laughs. ‘Yer the youngest of the Fox-Talbot boys, ent yer?'

‘I'm afraid so,' I say.

‘Knew yer mother,' he says. ‘She wis just like yer. Fair hair and potty about music. Used ter play that organ in church.'

I'm still, I can't breathe for listening. ‘My mother? You remember her?'

No one speaks of her. Not the chaps I know. The large man nods again and squeezes a hand into his waistcoat pocket. ‘Them others are too young ter remember. But I knew her. Nice lady. Good organist. Better than that awful feller we 'ave now. I still miss Mrs Fox-Talbot.'

He looks at me for a moment, slowly recollecting things he hasn't thought about for years.

‘She used ter bring you with her sometimes. In a basket like a kitten. Yer'd sleep by her feet while she played. I thought that racket would wake a baby. But no, she said yer liked it.'

I want to know what she played. Every piece. Every note. He can't remember – ‘Oh, the usual stuff. Hymn tunes and that.'

This is a picture of my mother I've never seen before. I won't tell it to my brothers. This is mine. I have so little of her and I've been given another piece, an unexpected, blissful fragment.

As I sway home, I warble to myself, only slightly off-key. I kick a tin can, which bounces into the hedgerow. The tunes circle in my mind, round and round in a noisy carousel. I'll
go home and I'll write them down before I fall asleep in a pleasant cider haze. And then certainty runs through me, cool as a winterbourne. I have the theme for the third movement of my symphony. These old folk tunes have taken root inside me, and caused something new to grow in my imagination. I hum the theme. Damn and blast – I need a piano. I wonder whether Edie knows where I can find one cheaply. With a hiccup of cider, I realise I haven't thought about her for several hours.

‘We need a milking machine, not a piano,' says George.

‘Why do we need a milking machine? We don't have any cows.' Frustration is making me belligerent.

‘We can't afford to buy cows. So we definitely can't afford a piano.'

I swallow my irritation. ‘I'm not buying one. Edie's persuaded someone in London to give it to me, but he wants to meet me first.'

I'm tired of the struggle. I simply can't manage without a piano. Jack has remained quiet throughout the squabble. He's torn. On the one hand, he doesn't think I should leave the farm and go off to London, but it's Edie who's arranged the loan of the piano and he can't show disloyalty to her.

‘I'll be gone one day and one night.' I glance at George. ‘I'll be back before you can say “Dorset longhorn”.'

He grunts but doesn't laugh. Jack's trying not to smile. He winks at me.

‘I'll nip down to the village and telephone Edie to let her know you're coming up to town.'

Jack knows how I feel about Edie, and yet I'm clearly such a pathetic rival that he's perfectly easy at the thought of my squiring her around London for a day or two. I'm both
wounded and grateful, and my gratitude causes a bow-wave of self-loathing to wash over me. After he's gone, I decide to dedicate the rest of the evening and a bottle of Scotch to getting properly sloshed. Two glasses in, I decide with the absolute clarity of a drunk that I simply must persuade George that my collecting folk songs and writing music will be a good thing for all of us.

‘The piano's not only for me, George.'

‘Thing is, old sport, Jack and I don't play.'

‘No, but I need it to play through the old songs I find. I can't transcribe them properly without a piano. The old songs I find are remarkable, George. They're going to save this place.'

‘If you say so, Fox.'

‘Whenever I'm lost, musically, I listen to these old tunes and they show me the way. They're like route maps.'

George glances at me dubiously over the top of the latest issue of the
Western Gazette
. ‘I'm not lost, Fox. I'm in my pleasant, if draughty, sitting room.'