Read The Song of Hartgrove Hall for Free Online Page B

them.
    Immediately I knew that I’d said the wrong thing. I could feel their intake of breath. I wished I’d fibbed and said something about this year’s theme being loss and hope or some such nonsense, even if I knew I’d never go through with it and would have had to pretend in a few months that all the soloists I’d invited were mysteriously busy this year. But I didn’t think fast enough and as soon as the words left my mouth I knew that I was in for it and Operation ‘Buck Up Papa’ was moving up a gear.
    I waited for a week but nothing happened, apart from the usual calls from Clara on her car phone during the school run with the children shrieking in the back about forgotten swimming kits and unfinished homework. Clara always called me when she was occupied with something else as though proving to us all just how many things she could juggle at once. I wished she’d call less often when she actually had a moment to talk.
    There were messages on the answer phone from Lucy who, I’m certain, timed her calls for when she knew I’d be out or in the shower. She wished me to know that she was concerned but would prefer not to actually speak to me when the conversation was both predictable and uncomfortable.
    Lucy: ‘How are you today?’
    Me: ‘I’ve been better.’
    Lucy: ‘Did you manage to play at all?’
    Me: ‘No.’
    I would have preferred to leave messages on my answer phone and avoid me too.
    I spent the week as usual, drifting through loose and identical days, dreary except for grief. At night I couldn’t sleep. I’d lie awake in the small hours, aware of every creak and click of wood and the cold space beside me. During the days I was so tired. A weariness settled in my bones, as if they’d been boiled too long and softened into marrow. Even though I’d potter quietly through the afternoon and be careful not to nap, not for a minute – come night-time, there I was, lying awake in the dark, listening to the hum and rattle of the house.
    Memories drifted through my mind unsummoned and I’d be forced to watch, passive and powerless to staunch them. All I wanted was dull and dreamless sleep but instead I’d see Edie trying to pin up her hair before a concert, hands shaking so badly that I had to help. She suffered from terrible stage fright throughout her career, but no one ever knew apart from me. Sleep receded from me, and I found myself holding a trembling ghost of Edie in the wings of the Royal Albert Hall, her dress slick with sweat. A stagehand appeared and politely enquired as to whether she was all right, to which she replied, ‘Absolutely fine,’ and promptly vomited in the fire bucket.
    I remembered how Edie used to disappear off on her snow walks in the night and, half awake, I’d try to fool myself that she’d just gone for a wander through the gardens, perhaps asfar as the hill. But Edie went walkabout only on the wintriest of nights, and inevitably the next thing I’d hear was the warble of a chiffchaff or I’d inhale the treacherous scent of jasmine through the open window, and I’d know it was summer and I wasn’t even permitted the respite of pretence. I’d lapse into an exhausted doze shortly before dawn, wondering whether this was to be the rest of my existence: an endless replay of our marriage, the repeats slowly losing their clarity and colour.
    Before Edie died, I’d never lived alone. Even when she took a trip without me, the housekeeper would live in while she was gone – I’m of the generation where men are considered useless, helpless creatures unable to boil an egg without assistance. I’d achieved the age of seventy-odd, having spent hardly a night in the house on my own. But when Edie died, I couldn’t bear the thought of a stranger sleeping there. I feared an outsider would drive away the last pieces of her. I didn’t want