The Song of Hartgrove Hall Read Online Free PDF Page B

too close together, as both of them avoided the place nearest the fire, Edie’s spot. No one could bear to sit there. I was tempted to because then she’d have to come in and shoo me away as she always did, but I knew that was daft. They perched there, two birds on a branch, Lucy, my little chaffinch, small and dark with fluttering, uncertain hands. I copied that movement once, when conducting Debussy and I wanted a ripple to run through the strings. I didn’t tell Lucy. She wouldn’t have taken it as a compliment.
    Clara settled against the cushions with studied ease, ankles tidily crossed, expensive handbag on the floor beside her. Edie bought those cushions from Liberty on a spree a hundred years ago and I never liked them. A bit gaudy if you ask me. Though of course she hadn’t and now I’d never part with them. Ridiculous how ugly snatches of household bits and bobs suddenly become precious and imbued with sentiment.
    Both girls sat facing me with porcelain teacups perfectly balanced on their knees (I never know how they do this; it’s one of the many things their mother must have taught them) and informed me that I needed a hobby. Distraction. Ineeded To Make Friends. They were brimming with suggestions – I could join the bridge club, I could grow my own vegetables. When I suggested joining the local Women’s Institute as an honorary gentleman member and trying my hand at treacle sponge, I gained a stern look from Clara who clearly didn’t think I was taking this seriously enough. So I listened politely to their advice (I always listen carefully before doing precisely what I want – children, even when over forty, don’t like to be ignored).
    â€˜Are you managing to write at all?’ asked Lucy, her forehead notched with concern.
    â€˜Not at the minute. Another biscuit?’ I thrust the plate at her and took a biscuit myself, shoving it into my mouth all at once so that I couldn’t possibly answer any more questions. She didn’t take the hint.
    â€˜You’re playing the piano, though, aren’t you, Papa?’
    I pointed to my bulging cheeks, but the girls smiled politely and waited until I’d finished.
    â€˜No, darling, I am not playing the piano.’
    I’ve never been good at lying to Lucy. Even as a child she’d stare at me with those huge guileless grey eyes, believing every word I uttered to be a fixed and unalterable truth, so that in the end I couldn’t bear to tell her the tiniest of fibs. I wanted to be as truthful as she believed me to be.
    I hadn’t played the piano since the day Edie died. I’d tried. I’d opened the lid when I arrived home after the funeral. I’d slunk away from the visitors and their pocket recollections of Edie that they were all too eager to share over the sandwiches and vol-au-vents, so that in the car on the way home they might console themselves that they had done their duty and given a pleasant memory to the poor old sod. I’d disappeared into the music room with a glass of decent Scotch and a cigar, and closed the door, grateful for solitude, but when faced with the keys, I hesitated – my hands suddenly unsure where to land.I’d never had to think about playing, any more than I have to think about forming words with my mouth when I speak.
    My fingers were terribly cold, and I couldn’t fix on which was the appropriate piece for the occasion. Since I was playing for Edie it needed to be the perfect choice performed just so, but my joints were clumsy and stiff. When I reached into my memory for Bach he wasn’t there, nor was Schubert. Even the little Chopin nocturne I’d played as a joke when she couldn’t sleep was hiding somewhere in a recess of my brain. I’d ended up closing the lid of the piano and announcing to the empty room that tomorrow I’d play. I’d compose something especially for Edie and play it for her. However,