The Song of Hartgrove Hall (39 page)

‘Darling, what on earth's the matter?' I say, bending down and trying to hug her to me, but she pushes me away and continues to sob. Uselessly, I reach for my pocket handkerchief, which she takes and does not use, only twists around her finger.

‘Please try to breathe,' I say. ‘Tell me what's wrong. Are you ill?'

She stares up at me, her face puffy and swollen, her cheeks sodden and her nose running. I wonder how long she's been hiding here.

‘I'm having a baby.'

She starts to cry again.

‘Oh, Edie.'

This time she lets me embrace her, and I hug her tightly to my chest, hoping that her tears will subside. But I can't help asking.

‘Is it mine?'

‘I don't know. How could I possibly know?'

‘I thought women could tell these things.'

‘Oh, Fox. Don't be ridiculous.'

I hold her close, not wanting her to see that I'm wounded. It's beastly knowing that she's still sleeping with Jack. Again, I'm not permitted to be upset about it, not being the husband. I guessed she probably was but I discover that's quite a different thing from knowing for sure.

‘What do you want to do? I can try to find a doctor to, well, you know, put a stop to the thing, if that's what you want,' I ask, as gently as I can.

She sits back on an upturned flowerpot, rubs her eyes, smearing dirt across her cheek, and offers me a look of disdain.

‘It's not a thing. It's a baby. I'm going to be a mother.'

She sounds absolutely certain and, for the first time since I found her in the potting shed, she stops crying.

‘The baby's going to have a family. A proper one. Even if it's just him and me.'

She looks at me again, her expression grave and defiant.

I kneel beside her, uncomfortably aware that I'm not party to this decision at all. I study her, wondering exactly how long she's known.

‘What do you want to do, Edie? I don't suppose we can carry on as we are.'

She shakes her head. ‘Of course we can't. The whole thing is a ghastly mess but we have to tidy it up before the baby appears. It's not his fault.' She sounds irritated and distant. ‘I have to do the right thing. It's a bit late for it, I know, but there it is. I've been a coward long enough.'

Dread gathers in the pit of my stomach. She doesn't know who the father is and so I suppose she could discreetly cast me off. No one else would ever know. The possibility of this makes me crippled with anxiety. I suppose it's the least selfish course but I don't care.

‘Don't leave me,' I say. I try to keep the note of pleading from my voice. ‘I love you.'

‘What if the baby's Jack's?'

‘It doesn't matter.'

I'm not sure that anything matters much other than that Edie doesn't leave me. I'm vaguely aware that I ought to be considering the child in all this but it's a tiny abstract, not yet a person. I try not to resent the ramifications that its very existence is causing in adult, fully realised lives.

‘We'll get married. I'll look after you both,' I say.

Edie studies me, saying nothing but nibbling on a fingernail.

‘I have to tell Jack,' she says quietly.

‘Tell him what?' I ask, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘That you're leaving him? That you love me?'

‘Oh, Fox,' she says.

Her eyes fill with tears and with horrible clarity I understand that she doesn't know what she will decide. I suppose that in one way or another she must love him too.

‘Well,' I say, standing and drawing back from her.

I look down at her, still perched on top of a terracotta flowerpot, my bedraggled handkerchief clutched in her hand. With her eyes bright from crying, she looks frightfully young.

‘Well,' I repeat, ‘I'm not going to be dignified or magnanimous. I love you. Always have, I'm afraid. Expect I always will. I'm not entirely sure that I could manage without you.'

She swallows and nods but does not speak.

—

We find Jack reading the newspaper in the morning room, squinting against the sunlight streaming through the windows. He smiles with simple pleasure at seeing us both.

‘Jack—' says Edie.

I can't bear to watch as she tells him. We have done this, she and I. Like a coward, I look away, scrutinising the clouds ballooning across the sky.

When she has finished, with an evident force of will, like an injured man scooping his guts back inside, Jack gathers himself, moves to sit on the window seat and looks out at the garden. It's tactlessly beautiful: the lawns in perfect stripes, the borders purple with lavender and late summer bees. I see our three faces reflected in the glass like ghosts. This room will always be haunted for me now. I will never enter it without the guilt of remembering what I've done.

Edie sits on the high-backed settle and sobs.

‘Please stop,' says Jack, quietly.

She stops.

‘I wish we could take it back,' I say.

‘No you don't. It's carried on for years, so you say. And you love her?'

‘I do. Very much.'

‘Then don't say you'd take it back. That makes it worse. Makes it some little affair. Is that all it was?' His voice is very soft. He's white with anger. A muscle in his forehead pulses.

‘No.'

He turns to Edie, his face blank. ‘And do you love him?'

‘Yes.' Tears are streaming down her face now. ‘But I loved you too. I still do. I never meant to hurt you.'

‘Well, I'm afraid you have.'

I wish he weren't so calm. I wish he'd rage and hit me. His eyes are wide with incredulity. The shame is overwhelming.

‘You've hurt me. Humiliated me. Sheer bloody betrayal is what it is. I'm not as clever as you or Fox. I simply don't have the words to express what it is you've done to me.'

Edie sobs again and this time she can't stop. I want to go to her, but know I mustn't. Jack pours us all a drink. Edie's hands are trembling so badly that she can hardly hold the glass. Jack sits across from her, eyeing her steadily.

‘Please look at me, Edie. I'd like you to look at me while I'm speaking to you.'

She raises her eyes. She looks so full of shame, so distraught, that I can hardly bear it. Even Jack is shaken.

‘Well, here we are,' he says gently.

He reaches out and takes her hand. Grateful at this apparent sign of forgiveness, she clasps it in both of hers. Despite everything, I feel an unconscionable spurt of jealousy. Jack sighs.

‘You are pregnant. There is no way to know whose child it is. Most likely Fox's, since you and I aren't quite the honeymooners we once were.'

Edie looks down at her lap and instinctively tries to withdraw her hand but Jack holds onto it.

‘I'm sorry, Edie darling. I'm not trying to embarrass you, merely tell the truth. That's what we're trying to do, isn't it?'

She nods, unable to speak.

‘Now. I shall try to forgive you and raise the child as my own, if that's what you want. Or you may divorce me. We can arrange it in the usual way. I'll be discovered in Weston-super-Mare with some two-bit whore and you'll be free to marry Fox here. But' – and now for the first time Jack sounds angry; his voice wobbles with held-back rage – ‘but if you'd hoped that I would simply leave you so that you didn't have to make a decision, I'm afraid that you're quite mistaken.'

Edie gazes at him in shock, a round spot of colour on each cheek.

‘We're good men, Fox and I. We won't make it easy and walk away from you, so you'll have to choose.'

‘I'm so sorry—'

‘Don't be sorry. Choose.'

He speaks with some force. Edie looks from Jack to me, her eyes wide with alarm. I'm frightened. Terribly frightened that I might lose her. I feel sick. Blood rushes in my ears. Choose me. Oh God, choose me. A fly batters against the windowpane.

‘Fox,' she says. ‘I choose Fox.'

My heart hurries.

Edie turns to Jack, eyes big with guilt. ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘Well. There we are,' he says and stands. He brushes some imaginary muck from his trousers and straightens. He glances from Edie to me, daring us to pity him. We don't dare.

‘I'm sorry,' I say. ‘This is the worst thing I've ever done in my life. The worst thing I'll ever do.' I offer him my hand, but he shakes his head and steps back.

‘No. I shan't shake your hand, Fox. It isn't all right and I don't forgive you. Because I'm not eloquent and clever, you thought I didn't love her as you could. You are wrong. I did and I do.'

I'm shaken by the unhappiness and anger spilling from him. ‘I'm so sorry. Edie and I will leave this afternoon. You need never see us again.'

Jack smiles sadly. ‘Leave or stay. Do what you want. I'm afraid I simply don't care in the least what you do. But I shan't stay here. Not for another minute. Not after what you've done. Everything at Hartgrove will remind me of you. Every path we walked together. Every bloody tree. I can't look at what you've done. And I can't forgive you.'

I stand there, dumb.

He shakes his head. ‘You've taken everything. My wife. My home. Perhaps even my child.'

He walks to the window and stares out. A pair of swans swoop above the lake, their necks stretched out in flight like spurts of lightning. The sun catches on their wings, making them glint gold. I would prefer it to be raining, so that he left Hartgrove in soggy ugliness and not this sublime beauty. He looks away but if he sighs, I do not hear him.

He pauses at the door. ‘Goodbye, Edie. Goodbye Fox.'

And then he's gone.

I
found the loneliness piercing. I'd begun to find a rhythm after Edie; altered, of course, but I'd started to believe in the possibility of pleasures here and there. After Marcus, I lost my footing again. Sleep eluded me. Frightened that the silence might return, I forced myself to write a little in the afternoons, but everything I produced seemed inadequate and thin.

One Saturday morning, I read a grisly review of a new piece I'd been writing in the
Telegraph.
It had been performed at the Cheltenham Music Festival but I'd had a horrid cold and been unable to conduct, so John had stepped in at the last minute. I had never liked his style, but I'd been in quite a pinch. Uncharitably, I considered how much of the critic's rudeness could be put down to John's interpretation. Mostly the critic seemed put out that someone old had dared attempt something new. John telephoned to apologise. I wouldn't hear of it.

‘Don't be ridiculous. Of course it wasn't your fault. He simply didn't like the piece. That's all there is to it.'

There was a pause. Then I heard John sigh. ‘It's the first time I've had to find a lousy review on my own. Usually Marcus has faxed the damned thing over to me before I've even woken up. You'd think I'd be glad but I'm not. I miss the old bugger.'

‘It's the miserable thing about getting to our age. One starts to outlive one's friends. It's a lonely business.'

After he'd rung off, I reread the review and, thoroughly depressed, asked myself whether, as well as outliving my friends, I'd outlived my era.

Ten minutes later Robin sprang into the music room, while I was still bathing in self-pity.

‘Hello, Grandpa!' he said and came to sit beside me at the piano, where I was reviewing a concerto I'd been attempting. He'd shot up in the past few months, and to his utter delight could now reach the pedals.

‘Can I give it a go?' he said, glancing through the pages.

‘Perhaps later. I'm too cross to think at the moment.'

‘Ah. Are you growing too? I get cross when I grow, Mum says.'

‘I'm certainly not growing. Shrinking perhaps.'

‘Shrinking? Poor you. No wonder you're cross. Well, if you can't reach the pedals any more, I can do them for you, like you used to for me when I was little.'

I laughed despite myself. He'd managed them alone for a mere matter of weeks.

‘I'll bear it in mind, Robin.'

I surrendered my chair to him and listened for nearly two hours while he practised without pausing for so much as a pee or a glass of water.

‘You're really coming on, darling.'

‘I played in school assembly on Monday.'

‘So I heard. Did it go well? They can't have known what had hit 'em.'

I'd finally agreed with Clara that it would be a good thing for Robin to perform in front of his school. All the children learning musical instruments did so, apparently, and, according to Clara, the fact that Robin did not was odd. She also insisted that if the children could hear Robin, they'd understand why he was sometimes a little different – why he always chose piano practice over football or cricket. Perhaps she was right, but privately I suspected that a primary-school assembly was a very good place for him to play – the audience would not distinguish in its enthusiasm between a rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle' wheezed out on a recorder or a distinctive interpretation of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in B-flat major.

‘Well, what did they make of it then?'

‘I was fantastic,' he said, with the straightforwardness of the young. ‘I was told by Mrs Morgan to play for only ten minutes because the little ones in Reception and Year One couldn't manage any more, but at the end of the first movement they clapped so hard that I played the second. And then I did the third even though she was waving at me to stop. I closed my eyes and pretended I couldn't see her.'

‘Did they like those too?'

‘Oh yes. I played for over half an hour. Everyone was really late for first lesson.'

‘And even the little ones sat still?'

‘Yes. But when they went out, there was a puddle because Mark Stanton in Year One had done a wee on the floor.'

‘Oh dear. That's a shame.'

‘Not really. He told me at break that he didn't want to miss anything. That's why he didn't go to the loo even though he couldn't hold it in. I thought it was a really nice compliment, actually.'

‘Yes, you're quite right. I don't think my music has ever made anyone pee on the floor.'

Robin grinned. Clearly I'd underestimated the discernment of young children: they were perfectly capable of recognising extraordinary talent.

After orange juice and chocolate cake in the kitchen, Robin turned to me. ‘Please can I try your new tune now? I've not been the first to play anything for ages.'

In hindsight, I ought simply to have refused. I knew the piece wasn't ready and I was in quite the wrong frame of mind. We returned to the music room, and I gave him the first few pages. I was surprised at how well they sounded. It was astonishing how the boy could sense what I was trying to say and tease out the intention, making it elegant and lyrical. He overheard my thoughts, even as I had them.

‘It's not at all bad! Much better than I thought. You're an absolute marvel,' I said, and Robin's ears pinked with pleasure as he continued to play.

And then, inevitably, it went wrong. Our ideas diverged and it was no longer the piece I'd imagined but something else.

‘No. Stop. You're not hearing it. Try again.'

He faltered and then had another go. It was worse. It didn't sound anything like what I'd envisaged.

‘Stop. No. Again.'

He tried once more, but this time I stopped him after only a few bars.

‘It's all off. Why can't you hear it? Is there something wrong?'

‘You're shouting, Grandpa.'

‘I'm sorry, Robin.'

I tried to control my rising sense of panic. If Robin couldn't hear it, then no one could and I'd be alone.

‘Try again. Go from the top. The first bit was wonderful.'

Only this time it wasn't. He played it differently and it was quite wrong. Not how I'd heard it at all.

‘No! For Christ's sake, Marcus, just stop,' I said, slamming the piano lid down.

Robin snapped back his fingers just in time and turned to look at me, his mottled face now streaming with tears. ‘I'm not Marcus. I'm Robin.'

I was instantly filled with remorse. ‘Oh darling, I'm sorry. It isn't your fault. It's mine. I'm not myself.'

I tried to hug him, but Robin pushed me away. ‘I think I'd like to go home now,' he said with trembling dignity. ‘I'm sorry I didn't play it how you heard it in your head. I played it how I heard it in mine.'

‘Of course you did. I'm so sorry.'

I telephoned Clara who came straight away. Shamefaced, I told her what had happened, while Robin stayed close to her, staring at me in wounded puzzlement.

She sighed. ‘Hasn't he got enough to cope with at the moment, Papa? I know you're feeling pretty wretched, but you have to try. You're supposed to be the grown-up.'

‘You're quite right,' I replied, feeling rotten. ‘I'm sorry, Robin,' I said for the umpteenth time. ‘I'm not myself just now.'

I offered him my hand, and he hesitated for a moment before shaking it.

After they'd left, I went to lie down but I could not sleep. I listened to the wind rustle through the beeches and breathed in the sickly scent of the last honeysuckle. I heard the sound of the doorbell, shrill and insistent. I ignored it but it rang a second time and then a third. Thoroughly put out, I hastened downstairs to find a young woman on the doorstep.

‘I'm sorry, Mr Fox-Talbot, you did say three o'clock, didn't you?'

‘Three o'clock for what exactly?'

Had I forgotten the chiropodist again?

‘I'm Emma Livingstone from
The Times.
We were going to talk about the Marcus Albright memorial concert?'

‘Oh, yes. So we were.'

She stared at me, glancing down at my feet in their socks, part inconvenienced journalist and part social services concern. ‘We can reschedule if you like but it might end up being too late to run the interview before the concert.'

‘No. No. Mustn't risk that. Come on in.'

A little later, we were safely ensconced in the music room, a tape recorder and two cups of tea between us. She looked to me to be about Clara's age. She wore black-rimmed spectacles, her dark hair was threaded with grey and she had that tired, smudged look of women in their forties with small children. I noticed a little trail of jam on her T-shirt. Her linen trousers had not been ironed. I supposed most women didn't bother with such things nowadays.

‘So, you met in the 1950s?'

‘I'm so terribly sorry. I met whom?'

Still agitated after the upset with Robin, I realised with some alarm that I was finding it difficult to concentrate on the young woman's questions.

‘Did you meet Marcus Albright in the 1950s?'

‘No, it would have been earlier than that. Forty-eight or forty-nine.'

‘You often describe him as your collaborator, which intrigues me because, famously, you never let him conduct your work.'

‘I did once. Terrible mistake. Sounded bloody awful. But he was my first listener. After Edie, that is. Edie, my wife. She was like my own ears. I didn't know what I thought about something until Edie told me. Now with them both gone, I feel rather as if I'm going deaf. I'm unsure half the time whether what I'm hearing is any good or not.'

I glanced down at the tape recorder. ‘Leave that bit out, would you? Makes me sound a bit doolally.'

‘I don't think it does. It makes you sound like a man who's lost people he loved.'

‘Now I sound pathetic. An emotional squeeze-box. I've always loathed the accordion.'

She stared at me. ‘I'll leave it out.' She scribbled something in her notebook.

I fidgeted. The business with Robin was itching away at me like a nasty woollen vest. Although I wanted to call Clara and find out whether he was all right, I supposed I ought to leave them in peace for a while.

‘And you and Marcus were very close.'

‘Yes, we were. For more than fifty years.'

To my utter shame and horror, I had the dreadful feeling that I was about to cry. At that moment I could think of no indignity worse than sitting in an interview with a jam-speckled woman from
The Times
and sobbing. Perhaps that's why I
found myself blurting out, ‘Marcus was family essentially. He was my brother George's lover on and off for many years.'

I took momentary glee in the look of sheer surprise on her face, then felt a twinge of anxiety about how thoroughly inappropriate this admission was. On the plus side, I no longer felt in the least like bawling.

‘I'm afraid you can't possibly print that,' I said. ‘Sorry.'

She removed her spectacles and gave a tiny, schoolmistressy sigh. ‘Fine. But you do realise that you're waving candy bars under my nose and then telling me that I can't eat them?'

‘Oh dear. But it's quite out of the question. Marcus wouldn't have minded in the least – indeed, I was always begging him for more discretion over his affairs, but George was a very private person. I miss George. He was a good egg.'

‘He was your middle brother?'

‘Yes. And terribly attractive, according to Marcus. He always complained that George had a hard time of it. Said people noticed me and, of course, Jack. Everyone noticed Jack. But old George got rather left out of things.'

George who never reproached me or Edie about what we had done, who'd simply sat and listened when we told him. He did not blame us even when it transpired that Jack had left without saying goodbye to him. I'd thought that was callous; after all, George, good old George, was not to blame but then, I'd supposed, I could hardly complain about my brother disappearing and cutting off contact. He had far better reason than I had ever had. Latterly I had begun to view it as an act of kindness. Perhaps George would have tried to go with him to God knows where and Jack had known that would never do. George needed Hartgrove. He could not leave the Hall and be happy.

George missed Jack dreadfully. George's loss was pure while mine was edged with relief. No longer having to face Jack, I did not have to face my guilt daily. I could pack it neatly away and try not to think of it in the quiet and the dark. Jack's
absence was soon filled with Clara, who wriggled into the void he had created, noisy and vital, until soon we didn't notice any hole at all.

The General took Jack's absence at first as a joke, some farcical, bed-swapping fun.

‘Well, there's no need for you two to marry, is there? She already has your last name.'

He'd started to call Edie ‘Bathsheba' until George quietly, tactfully, put a stop to it. Later, in his dotage, when the General persistently called me Jack, I thought that this was probably his way of telling me that he did not forgive me.