The Song of Hartgrove Hall (43 page)

‘It's creepy,' said Robin.

‘It is a bit,' I agreed.

‘I like it,' said Jack with a touch of defiance. ‘I can sit here with my cold glass of something-something and listen to a great musician on a Friday lunchtime.'

‘It's not a musician,' said Robin. ‘It's a ghost.'

‘Or an echo,' I agreed. ‘A great musician plays the same piece differently every time. He can't play it in the identical way ever again, even if he wished to. Here, the music is trapped, forced to come out precisely the same. The exact nuance and expression.'

‘Good God, you're just as much of a musical snob as you always were,' said Jack, snappish.

‘And you're just as much of a philistine,' I said with a smile.

As he chuckled good-humouredly at the insult, I was relieved to have another glimpse, however watery, of the old Jack.

‘Look here, why don't you record something, Robin?' he asked. ‘Then I can listen to you when you've gone back home.'

‘He's a splendid pianist,' I said.

Robin frowned. ‘I don't want to be a ghost.'

‘Every recording is a ghost in a way, Robin,' I said. ‘You like it when we record you at home so you can listen to your practice. This isn't very different.'

‘I suppose so. All right.'

In ten minutes the instruction book had been found, and Robin was seated at the pianola, an impromptu crowd of eager retirees huddled around him.

‘Does he want some sheet music?' asked an elderly lady in shorts that revealed a tube map of varicose veins. ‘I'm sure my granddaughter left some behind in my condo. I can run and get it.'

‘That's very kind, but he doesn't need any. He keeps it all in his head,' I said.

Usually I was circumspect about Robin's remarkable gifts, until I came face to face with other grandparents, when to my chagrin I found it almost impossible not to brag just a bit.

He sat at the keyboard and played a few scales and then without a pause began to play a Mozart sonata in D major. The retired stockbrokers and real-estate agents, the housewives and lawyers, all listened, glancing around at one another, their mouths a series of surprised Os. This was a place of routine, where nothing out of the ordinary happened, where the menu always had the chicken and the sky was always the perfect colour-match shade of blue, and although every now and again a resident was carried out, never to return, even that was only to be expected. Genuine, goodness-gracious surprises were a precious rarity and here was four feet and two and a
half inches of utter surprise and brilliance, sitting in the clubhouse restaurant in his sandals, a dab of tomato ketchup on his chin.

I felt a hand on my arm, and realised that Jack was squeezing me.

‘Good God, Fox. Good God. He's a marvel.'

A second later, it occurred to me that this was the first time Jack had uttered my name.

—

Afterwards we strolled through the perfect gardens, which stretched down towards the golf course. Jack grilled Robin about his piano practice and he chattered back eagerly – there was nothing he liked better, if he wasn't actually playing.

‘Five hours every day! I'm surprised you have time to sleep and eat.'

‘Sometimes I don't shower.'

‘Washing is extremely overrated.'

Robin studied Jack with clear approval.

A pelican soared above the palms, its vast wingspan an echo of something prehistoric. Even the long grass was all precisely the same length, as though it had been strimmed with a ruler. An enormous butterfly landed on a brightly coloured bush and posed there, preening at its own beauty.

‘Look!' shouted Robin in some excitement, pointing towards a blue pool near a manicured green. ‘A crocodile.'

A long brownish shape rested on the edge, a monster lurking in paradise, still as death and just as sinister. The butterfly fluttered beside its eye but it remained motionless, unblinking.

‘Ah, an alligator,' said Jack. ‘A rather large one. Perhaps we should take the long way round.'

‘Are there many of them?' I asked.

‘Oh yes. The club allows them to stay here until they're about five feet or so. Then they're carted off on a tour bus to
the Everglades. It seems a bit unfair. Our little slice of Eden is built over their swamp.'

I glanced back at the alligator hunkered beside the pool, and the landscaped gardens seemed to shimmer as though they were a mirage. Beneath the layer of watered lawns peppered with sprinkler spouts, I sensed the ripple and ooze of the swamp. This manufactured paradise was only a thin layer; underneath the taut grass and the plastic pools, the wild and ancient shuddered and groaned. If there was old music here, it had been driven to the edges. Songs would seep out of the swamp in the dark.

We walked back to the car park, Robin running ahead, neither Jack nor I saying much. I paused beneath a cupola of sky-blue jacquemontia.

‘Jack, why don't you come home for a visit? Come and see the old place once more?'

He frowned and looked away. For a second he looked old.

‘No. I won't ever go back. I left and that was it.'

‘But it would do you good. This place . . .'

I shrugged, somehow unable to explain how uneasy its perfection made me. I was relieved that Robin was here with me, to remind me of home and other things, otherwise I could see how tempting it would be to slide into a routine of early chicken dinners and rounds of sun-drenched bridge, surrendering all thought and desire. The magic kingdom wasn't in Disney World; it was right here amongst the retirement villages and flawless golf greens of southern Florida.

‘I would very much like you to visit. Come for as long or as short a trip as you like. I want you to meet my girls. You really ought to meet Clara.'

I was conscious that it must seem tactless to press the point, considering his lack of children or grandchildren, but it felt terribly important to me that he come. Perhaps he no longer wondered whether Clara might be his daughter.

‘It's very kind of you, but no thank you. With all this, why would I go anywhere else?'

Fronds of lurid flowers trembled in the breeze. The sprinklers clicked on with a whirr.

‘Don't you want to see home again?' I asked, knowing I was stepping onto dangerous ground with both feet.

‘Home?' he said. ‘Home?'

And his voice was so ugly and bitter that I knew he had not forgiven me for taking it from him.

‘I live here now,' he said at last, with an easy smile. ‘I'll never leave. Why would I? This is paradise.'

He walked me to the car and shook hands with Robin. He did not invite us to come and see him again before we left. Two days later Robin and I flew to Disney World.

I
decided to sell the house. I'd had a bad fall before Christmas. My own fault; I was carrying far too much down the stairs and tripped on a step I ought to have had mended. I knew from the horrible crack when I landed that I'd broken something. Turned out I'd fractured my pelvis. It's another unfortunate thing about getting older – one takes for ever to heal. I creaked along on two sticks for most of the spring and into early summer, nervous about venturing outside in the wet, always fretting about slipping and having another fall, but irritated by the weeds in the herbaceous border. Apparently sensing weakness, they seized the opportunity to create an empire amongst the petunias and drifts of snow-in-summer.

When Clara and Lucy initiated The Conversation, it came as rather a relief. We sat on the terrace, surrounded by pink marguerites that gasped, unwatered, in their pots. Lucy poured me a very stiff gin.

‘Papa, do you think that perhaps the house is a bit too much for you?'

To my shame, I wept. It was quite true. I couldn't bear the thought of anyone living in with me, but even I had to concede that a house with nine bedrooms, five reception rooms, a suite of attics and half a dozen ramshackle barns was a little large for one man approaching eighty.

‘You were born here. You grew up here. So did your children,' I said to Clara, once I'd regained my composure.

‘Oh Papa,' she said, and slid off her cushion, coming to sit beside my feet and resting her head on my lap as she did when she was a little girl.

‘Perhaps you could take it on?' I asked her, knowing it was the worst of white elephants.

I spent nearly seven thousand pounds each year on oil for the boiler in a futile attempt to keep the place warm. I'd negotiated a special rate with the electricity company. There was always something to be done: trouble with the roof, damp in the attics, a barn threatening collapse. Even though most of the land was now rented out to other farmers, it was still my responsibility to maintain the hedges and footpaths, and to supply water to the cattle troughs. That cost alone ran into the thousands. The water pipe through the meadows needed replacing and I was facing a bill of another twenty thousand.

‘I'm so sorry, Papa,' said Clara, trying very hard not to cry. ‘A house like this needs so much money and so much time. I don't have enough of either. After everything, I rather like my flat. It's so easy and cosy. Even if I did have the money, I couldn't cope with a house like this and with Robin.'

I nodded and swallowed, not trusting myself to speak. What she said was perfectly true. Robin, now approaching puberty, remained consumed by music and uninterested in manners, showering or baths of any kind. In the hope of encouraging him to make friends, we'd allowed him to join the National Youth Orchestra, where to our dismay he'd entered the Young British Musician of the Year competition after forging Clara's signature on the entry forms. We'd raged at him, pointing out that he'd committed fraud, to which he replied, ‘Either call the police and have them arrest me, or let me play the goddamn piano in the competition.'

We decided to let him play the goddamn piano. And docked two pounds fifty from his weekly pocket money. I'm not sure he noticed but this pretence at discipline made the rest of us feel better.

I turned to Lucy. ‘How about you, darling? You've always loved this place.'

She drew her knees up to her chin, hugging them close. ‘Of course I do, Papa. We all do. But I can't live here by myself. And I work in London.'

‘Perhaps as a weekend cottage then? We could get you some help.'

‘Papa, this would be a weekend cottage for a family of seventeen.'

I nodded again and took a large gulp of gin. They were being horribly sensible. I studied my daughters. Even though around fifty, they remained extremely pretty. Clara so fair and Lucy still so dark – a major and a minor key. I remembered that, once, fifty had seemed alarmingly close to being old – perfectly ridiculous. They seemed so young to me and yet both girls – women, I supposed I must call them – had a resolve and stillness that comes only with age.

‘Would you like to live with us?' asked Clara.

Despite the tenderness of her tone, I sensed her reluctance.

‘No thank you,' I said quickly. ‘I want to be by myself. I like my own company. I don't want to be fumbling about in someone else's kitchen. And I play my music horribly loud.'

‘You do,' she agreed, clearly relieved I'd declined but glad she'd done her duty.

‘In that case,' said Lucy, ‘how about moving into the little bungalow at the edge of the estate? It's all on one floor. It needs a new bathroom and the kitchen's a bit old-fashioned, but it's got a pretty garden and lovely views of Hartgrove Hill.'

‘Yes, I must be able to see the hill,' I agreed.

I no longer slept well beyond the shadow of the ridge. I suppose some would have simply said that I didn't travel well any more, but I was certain that it was the hill itself that mattered.

‘What do you think, Papa?' asked Clara.

They were poised, waiting. They'd clearly been discussing this for some time.

‘My father stayed there from time to time during the war. Later so did your uncle George.'

‘Of course we remember Uncle George living there,' said Clara. ‘He grew the best strawberries. Scarlet as lipstick.'

‘I suppose we could replant the strawberry beds,' I said.

‘Of course we can,' said Clara.

‘Is there room for the piano? I can't go anywhere without the Steinway,' I said, suddenly panicked.

If there wasn't the lure of the piano, Robin might not come to visit.

‘I've measured the sitting room,' said Lucy. ‘It fits beautifully.'

‘All right then,' I said. ‘I agree.'

A couple from London wanted to buy Hartgrove Hall. He'd been someone in the popular music business and she'd been a muse or a model or something or other. Although they'd been considering larger, grander houses elsewhere they liked what they insisted on referring to as the musical ‘pedigree' of Hartgrove Hall, as though it had descended through a line of particularly splendid golden retrievers. Clara warned me not to be rude, as there hadn't been any other offers. After a flurry of initial ecstasy from the estate agent, he then had the collywobbles, declaring that viewers had been put off by the amount of repair work needed.

Nonetheless, Mr Too-White-Teeth and Mrs Shiny-Locks seemed very taken with the place when they came for tea. I'd taken one look at them, dispensed with the scones and jam, and brought out a large bottle of gin.

‘My dad used to bring me to the festivals here when I was a kid,' explained Mr Too-White-Teeth. ‘It had a real fusty
charm. It wasn't smart or cool and it all smelled a bit of damp but I loved it.'

‘Good,' I said, a little tightly. ‘Fuddy-duddy charm was our aim.'

‘Felix doesn't mean no offence,' said Mrs Shiny-Locks.

‘Fuck, no,' said Mr Too-White-Teeth. ‘It was fucking awesome. Like Glastonbury in dinner suits but without the slime.'

‘Slime-free music, another of our goals,' I said pointedly, at which Clara walloped me under the table.

‘We're going to turn it into a dead nice boutique hotel, comfy and chichi, and then throw a festival in the gardens each summer. Probably not classical, though, yeah?' said Mr Too-White-Teeth. ‘It's hard to get bums on seats for that nowadays.'

‘Not young bums anyway,' I agreed. ‘Old bums here in the country are usually quite happy to listen to a spot of Ravel or Vaughan Williams. Even Shostakovich as long as there's some booze.'

The thirty-something couple in their expensively ripped jeans and studded T-shirts stared at me, then grinned good-humouredly. I understood that they simply weren't interested in tempting OAPs along to their concerts. They wanted their youthful audience to come all the way from London in their tiny shorts and fancy wellington boots. Clara berated me for being curmudgeonly, but the estate agent telephoned full of happiness, declaring that Mr Too-White-Teeth had found me so charming, he'd upped his offer.

‘See,' I said to Clara in triumph. ‘I'm remarkably engaging. Even when I'm trying to be rude, people are enchanted.'

After Clara left, I called Mr Too-White-Teeth and asked him to pop over the following day so that we could hash out the details. He arrived promptly after lunch and shook my hand warmly, while declaring, ‘If this is to squeeze any more
out of me, I can't do it, man. The wife's already giving me grief.'

‘No, no, it isn't that at all,' I said. ‘You're already being most generous. The place is falling to bits. You'll be cursing me for months after you move in.'

He laughed. ‘Yeah, the wife reckons we should get a survey done.'

‘Don't bother. Everything needs to be fixed. I can tell you that.'

‘Well, no one can accuse you of mis-selling.'

‘I should think not,' I retorted.

He stared at me, puzzled. ‘What is it that you want to talk about then?'

‘Come for a walk with me,' I said, dubiously regarding his much-too-clean trainers.

Suitably attired in a pair of borrowed wellingtons, Mr Too-White-Teeth accompanied me up the hill. It took me far longer than I liked, and he stopped tactfully to admire the view on several occasions in order to allow me to catch my breath.

‘Constable once painted this view,' I said. ‘The family had to flog the picture to pay for something or other before the war. It was a lovely painting, though.'

‘I know,' he said. ‘I bought it.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah. Came up again at Sotheby's a few years back. Thought I'd hang it in the great hall.'

‘What a good thought.'

We reached the woods. Spring was unfurling amongst the trees, while here and there appeared the feathered white of the hawthorn, like scattered brides. Catkins wobbled on the hazels and concealed in the branches I saw the smudge of last year's birds' nests, forlorn as abandoned cottages. The sun cast flickering spotlights across our faces and illuminated the scuttle
of the woodland floor, the rush hour of earwigs and beetles. I led Felix further into the trees, and he fell silent, listening to the rustle of our footsteps and the mercenary squabble of the rooks. We paused at the pile of stones marking George's grave.

‘This is my brother George,' I said. ‘He's buried here. Illegally, I'm afraid.'

‘Did you murder him?'

‘Certainly not.'

‘Then I can't see that it's a problem.'

‘Thing is, one day, I want to be buried here too. Next to George. These woods are part of the estate, but you can't ever fell them. You must leave them as they are.'

‘Wouldn't want to do anything to 'em. They're grand. Creepy. In a good way.'

‘Good,' I said, relieved. ‘But I also want your word that when my time comes, you'll let my daughters bury me here.'

‘All right. I don't mind having a couple of old geezers buried in my woods. Could have worse neighbours.'

He shook my hand.