The Song of Hartgrove Hall (7 page)

We all gather in the porch to watch them. Jack is thick with sleep. He's wearing his overcoat but the blue stripes of his pyjamas are still visible underneath and the effect is natty. I expect he's about to start another trend. His arm is draped around Edie and they're sharing a cigarette. The General is washed, shaved and immaculately dressed in his uniform, although I can't imagine why. Several girls and a couple of chaps have slept here after the night's festivities and they shake with cold, bleary-eyed, in last night's party clothes and borrowed boots, wondering what on earth they've been summoned outside to witness.

I'm restless with excitement. This is the first horn dance since the war. Or the first we've been here to witness, at any rate. I'm curious as to whether the villagers carried on doing it without us. It seems rather presumptuous to assume they stopped simply because we weren't here to watch and tip them a few shillings. There are twelve men, six of them shouldering the vast pairs of antlers, and one holding an accordion. They stand on the white lawn in their hobnailed boots, half human, half animal, pawing at the snow, waiting.

At last, with a nod from the leader, the accordion player strikes up. It's an uncanny tune and one I don't recognise. The dancers pause for a moment, seeming to sniff the air before they move into the dance, slipping into serpentine patterns. The knock of boots on the iron ground is a counterpoint to the melody. The pace quickens into a clattering run, and they break apart into two lines, surging forwards and then back again, horns scoring the sky but never touching one another.

I study the leader, our gardener Benjamin Row, who sports the largest pair of antlers, which are so knobbled and ancient, so black and solid, that they look more like stone than horn, and I speculate about the beast who shed them. It seems impossible that such a creature haunted the woods in this green and pleasant county of smooth hills and dappled woods. Despite the cold, fat beads of perspiration speckle Benjamin's forehead and drop onto the snow. The dancers shout and stamp, and the wail of the accordion oozes around us and drifts out into the morning, sinking towards the river where it will be carried out to sea.

The dance is hypnotic and strange. I turn to see what Edie is making of it all and I observe that her face is flushed, her eyes bright, her expression rapt. Jack is proffering her his cigarette but she doesn't notice and, when she does, she bats away his arm. Jack stifles a yawn and I turn back to the dance suffused with irritation.

The lawn is a churned-up mass of grubby white as the horn-men alternate back and forth in their two lines, grunting and red faced from exertion. I watch them surge and fall and it seems to me that they're slipping forward and then further back in time, back and back towards the beginning of things. I picture the woods rise up and bloom across the hills, until the back of Hartgrove Hill is darkly forested. The ground cracks open to swallow up the few houses and the pins of light from their windows blink into nothingness. The music is a heartbeat that thrums inside me.

Then I see that the dancers have stopped and the accordion is no longer playing and the General is signalling for whisky, while I can still hear nothing but the music and I know I shall have no peace at all until I've written it down. I excuse myself and race upstairs to sprawl on the bed with a pad of manuscript paper as the music spews forth and my hand cramps around my pen and then I'm finished and at last the room is
quiet. In relief, I close my eyes. There is only the faintest of aches behind them.

I return downstairs. The dancers mill in the great hall, swigging whisky and making conversation, and they no longer seem otherworldly. The smell of sweat mingles with woodsmoke and ever-present mildew. They laugh uproariously at some joke of Jack's but Edie isn't listening, she's watching me. I walk over to her side.

‘Where did you vanish to?' she asks.

‘It's an odd tune. Not one I know, so I had to write it down.'

She studies me for a moment. ‘Is that something you do often? Collect songs?'

‘From time to time.'

She makes it sound as if I'm a butterfly hunter and I suppose I am in a way, a hoarder of melodies. When I find one I don't know, I have to catch it, pin it into my book and fix it there. I don't need to look at it again once I have it. Writing a melody down, I transcribe it twice – once into my manuscript book and once into my memory. The horn-dancers' song will always be with me now.

‘Will you show me later?'

‘If you like.'

I shrug, feigning indifference, but I'm perfectly thrilled. No one's been remotely interested in my song-scribbling habit before.

—

After dinner I prowl beside the fire, eager to go to her, but no one may ever leave the dining room and return to the ladies before the General declares we may. Jack attempted it once but even he was rebuked. I have stashed the manuscript book in the cubbyhole in the ladies' sitting room that we still call the Chinese room even though the stencilled chinoiserie wallpaper was spoiled a decade ago and the sole Oriental item remaining
is a japanned cabinet that is missing a door. We no longer use the drawing room after dinner when we are so few. It is too large and on bitter evenings frost gathers on the inside of the windowpanes, stalking along damp patches on the wall.

Jack is yawning and only George pretends attention as the General recounts a gory battle during the second Boer War that we've all heard before. I wonder how they can bear his nostalgia for
Boy's Own
adventures after all they've seen. Again I wish they'd furnish me with the details. I feel peevish and the distance of the years between us grates. I feel much as I did when I was a boy of eight, and they at the grand ages of sixteen and thirteen sloped off to the barn to get blind drunk on filched cider, leaving me as their resentful lookout.

At last, piqued by our indifference, the General slams down his brandy glass and, muttering oaths of disappointment under his breath, stalks to the door. Chivers opens it for him, and I feel the echo of his disapproval as we file out. Edie waits alone in the Chinese room; she's reading but puts her book aside as we enter. It does not occur to the General that keeping her in purdah for nearly an hour, while he regales us with stories of his youth, was rude. I spy my manuscript book in the cubbyhole beside the fireplace and I'm all eagerness to show her but it's Jack at whom Edie's smiling with simple pleasure. She lets him kiss her cheek but when the General gives a cough of displeasure Jack kisses her again, this time on the mouth. Edie squirms and gently pushes him away.

‘Yes, yes, righto,' declares the General. He squats on the edge of a low chair, his back ramrod straight. I've never known anyone who makes after-dinner relaxation look quite so uncomfortable. ‘I suppose you travelled about a bit during the war, Miss Rose.'

She pulls Jack down to sit beside her and neatly crosses her ankles. ‘Yes, a fair bit.'

‘Did you get east? Cairo? Luxor?'

‘I went to Cairo twice.'

‘Palestine?'

Edie nods.

‘God, it's a bloody mess over there. Skulduggery, murder. Civil war.'

‘I thought you enjoyed a decent war. It's your favourite spectator sport after the Badbury point-to-point. You could put a fiver on each way,' says Jack.

I glance at him in alarm, presuming he drank too much at dinner, but to my surprise he seems quite sober.

George looks worried. ‘Steady on, old chap,' he mutters.

The General chooses to ignore Jack and simply carries on. He regards a second voice in a conversation as unnecessary. Company is present merely to provide him with an audience.

‘It's the ingratitude of the bloody Jews that galls me. Bloody ingratitude.'

‘What would you have them be grateful to us for?' asks Jack sweetly, and with that I know the conversation is becoming dangerous but I'm not quite sure why.

Edie places her hand firmly on Jack's knee. ‘Would you mind ringing for a glass of water, darling? I'm terribly dry.'

While Jack reaches for the bell to ring for Chivers, Edie turns to me. ‘May I take a look at the song?'

To my chagrin, I grasp that she's asking only in order to alter the course of the conversation. They all watch as I pull out the manuscript book from the cubbyhole. Edie shuffles along the sofa to make room, patting the spot between her and Jack. I squeeze in, jammed between them both, and Edie opens the book. It's a battered, leather-bound volume that was once blue but has faded to grey.

‘There are heaps of songs in here,' she says.

‘Nearly a hundred.'

‘How long have you been collecting songs, Fox?' she asks.

‘Ages. I have to write down a song if I haven't heard it before, otherwise it buzzes around like a mosquito in my brain. My problem isn't remembering tunes, it's trying to forget them.' I shift on the sofa, suddenly self-conscious, and wish the others weren't here. ‘I always keep an eye out. Or rather an ear, I suppose. Gather up what I find.'

Edie laughs. ‘You make it sound as if songs simply sprouted like berries on a hedgerow and sat there until you plucked them and popped them into your book.'

I laugh. I never really envisioned anyone else being interested in my song habit, far less a woman. Yet her enthusiasm appears sincere, and little spots of colour are daubed on each cheek. Jack fidgets and yawns, and George fiddles with the fire. I wish they'd jolly well leave us to it. Edie leafs through the pages, turning them carefully as though each one is a precious, fragile thing. She pauses, running her finger along the last.

‘I've never heard this one before. It's the one from this morning?'

I nod.

‘Well, I've sung hundreds of folk songs. I even recorded a few—'

‘I know. I have some of your recordings.'

She smiles. ‘Of course you do. Anyway, I've not come across this one until today. I don't know, but I think it's possible that no one's collected it before.'

I have a tingle in my belly; the satisfaction of discovery. Like an anthropologist rummaging through the jungle for lost tribes, I've found something ancient, as yet unrecorded and unfixed.

Edie smiles at me and returns the book. ‘It's an odd tune. Tugs at one. It's always nice to have made a find, don't you think?'

‘He's a clever old thing,' says Jack. ‘Much brighter than the rest of us. None of us is musical in the least.'

‘Mother sang,' says George.

No one speaks. I'm suddenly aware of the crackle and spit of logs on the fire. The General stiffens and blinks. Once. Twice. Jack grips Edie's hand more tightly.

The silence jangles.

‘She sang to me,' says George, insistent now. ‘And to Jack. And Little Fox.'

‘What did she sing?' I ask and it's suddenly desperately important that I know.

George shakes his head. ‘Can't remember. I don't have a head for tunes.'

It's splendid to be at home from Cambridge for the long summer vac. Three blissful months at Hartgrove Hall. Most of my pals are staying on in digs for an extra few days to drink and punt but I couldn't. Today is Mother's birthday picnic. We hold it every year. Apparently this is what she always chose for her birthday treat – a picnic under the willows by the River Stour. The General would strip off and go for a bracing swim amidst the ducks and the waterweeds, while the rest of us cheered him on from the bank.

I wonder whether Mother sang to us then and, if so, which songs. I don't remember any of it, but Jack and George are quite sentimental about the whole thing – as much for the man our father used to be as anything else. Chivers has winkled out an elderly cook from somewhere, and we ask her to make us up a hamper with cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, seedcake – Mother's favourite, apparently – and a bottle of hock, to which she was also partial. It's always a jolly afternoon. The General never comes. We invite him with careful politeness and there's inevitably a dreadful moment when we worry that this will be the one time he accepts but of course he doesn't.

George and I check the hamper in the kitchen. It's stuffed with all the usual goodies and a pound of early cherries, glossy and black. Jack isn't here. We're to collect him and Edie from the station at a quarter to one. It's the first time there's been anyone other than the three of us. Jack sent us a cable last night: ‘WILL BE ON THE TWELVE FORTY
-
FIVE STOP BE A SPORT AND PICK ME UP STOP BRINGING EDIE STOP'. He never telephones or writes, he inevitably selects the most expensive form of communication much as he chooses the best wine or cut of beef on the menu. I'm pleased Edie's coming and don't mind that he didn't consult us first. A little too pleased if I'm honest. I can't tell whether George minds or not.

George pokes at a pork pie wrapped in wax paper. ‘I'm hungry already.'

I nudge him away and rewrap the pie.