Read Online The Song of Hartgrove Hall by Natasha Solomons - Free Book Online Page B

then I’m finished and at last the room isquiet. 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.
    â€˜Where did you vanish to?’ she asks.
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Will you show me later?’
    â€˜If you like.’
    I shrug, feigning indifference, but I’m perfectly thrilled. No one’s been remotely interested in my song-scribbling habit before.
    â€”
    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 remainingis 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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Did you get east? Cairo? Luxor?’
    â€˜I went to Cairo twice.’
    â€˜Palestine?’
    Edie nods.
    â€˜God, it’s a bloody mess over there. Skulduggery, murder. Civil war.’
    â€˜I thought