The Song of Hartgrove Hall Read Online Free PDF Page A

unable to stutter more than monosyllables.
    â€˜Will you play for me, Harry? I’m frightfully tired. I don’t want to sing alone tonight.’
    â€˜I would. But – the piano. She’s not in tip-top condition. She’s had rather a hard war, I’m afraid.’
    Edie laughs. ‘She?’
    â€˜I’m sorry. I always think of her, it . . .’
    Edie reaches out and touches my arm. ‘It’s terribly sweet of you.’
    I’m nettled. I don’t want her to think I’m sweet. I’m not a child.
    â€˜The army moved the piano into the mess bar. Goodness knows what’s been poured over the keys. Not to mention the general damp. When I tried to tune her – it – one of the strings just snapped.’
    â€˜Please play for me, Harry.’
    â€˜Fine. But—’ I remember she said no requests.
    â€˜What is it?’
    â€˜Will you sing one of your early pieces? “The Seeds of Love” or “The Apple Tree”? Not that I don’t like the wartime songs, of course.’
    This isn’t true. I dislike Edie Rose’s wartime hits intensely. They’re patriotic guff. Tunes in one shade of pillar-box red. I walked out of a café once when ‘A Shropshire Thrush’ came on the wireless, even though I’d already paid.
    Edie gives me an odd look. ‘They won’t like it.’
    She glances at the assembled crowd and I’m pleased thatshe’s no longer counting me amongst them. Jack bounds over and kisses her on the cheek, tucking a curl behind her ear with easy familiarity.
    â€˜It’s time, old thing. Or do you want this first?’
    With a flourish he produces from his pocket a disintegrating fish-paste sandwich. Edie shakes her head and I point mournfully at the hog squatting on the table. ‘What’s wrong with my pig? No one seems to want it.’
    â€˜It’s splendid, Fox. Just not really Edie’s thing.’
    She turns to me. ‘Well, Harry? Shall we?’
    â€”
    Edie doesn’t sing my song. I sit at the rickety piano and cajole the keys into some sort of accompaniment, feeling as if I’m riding shotgun on an unsteady, half-dead nag that might either bolt or flop into the hedgerow at any moment. Edie’s a true professional and doesn’t let the screwball sideshow rattle her. She lulls the county set with that honeysuckle voice as she floats through the wartime hits that made her famous but which I cannot abide. I’m sweating from the effort of forcing the piano to obey and I have a headache. It’s past midnight and we’ve slid into 1947 and I haven’t even noticed. I need a drink and a clean shirt. The guests cheer and toast Edie and then me as she hauls me to my feet. They holler and even the General raises a glass.
    â€˜Shall we get out of here?’ she whispers through her teeth, giving them a playful curtsey.
    â€˜Dear God, yes.’
    We race outside before the crowd can smother her with well-lubricated enthusiasm. She lights me a cigarette and I take it, somehow too embarrassed to confess I don’t smoke. I can’t stop staring at her. She smiles at me, and it’s slightly lopsided as though she’s thinking of a mischievous and inappropriate joke. It’s horribly attractive.
    â€˜So how come when all three of you boys are Foxes, you are the only one called “Fox”?’
    I swallow smoke, trying not to cough, grateful that in the dark she can’t see my eyes water.
    â€˜I was always “Little Fox” but somehow now that I’m eighteen and nearly six foot, it seems, well, silly. So now I’m just Fox.’
    â€˜I see. Fox suits you. Although I’ve always liked the name Harry.’
    I wonder whether she’s flirting with me, but I’m so unpractised that I can’t tell.
    â€˜You need a new piano,’ she says.
    â€˜And a new roof and a hundred other things. But I