The Song of Hartgrove Hall by Natasha Solomons

at the blue-eyed boy with his fistful of photos. He looked at me and ripped one in half. I cried out. The pictures were old ones. Black and whites taken decades ago. He was stealing fragments of Edie from me. I wouldn’t let him.
    In the end it was Edie who saved herself. I heard her voice in my head – calm and soft, saying one of those things she always said: ‘There’s no point simply scolding them. Distract them.’
    So I did the only thing I could. I went over to the piano, sat down and started to play. Leopold Mozart’s
Toy
Symphonytumbled from my fingers. It took me a minute to realise that Robin was absolutely still. He dropped the photo album and walked over to the piano, shedding the sequinned ball gown en route, until he stood quietly beside me in nothing but his Superman underpants. I didn’t have the requisite whistle to hand for the piece, so I drummed out a rhythm on the piano lid. Robin joined in the second time, tapping the seat of the piano stool, repeating the beats precisely.
    â€˜Jolly good!’ I cried.
    I continued to play, this time singing the part of the nightingale with my left hand. Robin shuddered, stared at my fingers and then quickly at me. At the end of the movement, I paused. Robin tugged my hands back to the keys.
    â€˜Again, Grandpa. Again.’
    â€˜All right.’
    I started the nightingale section once more but, after a bar or two, Robin placed his hands over the keys, an octave above my own, and then to my absolute astonishment he began to play alongside me, shadowing the melody in absolute rhythm and time. I stopped, amazed, but the little fellow continued on alone until the end of the movement, not missing a note.
    â€˜You’ve played this before?’ I asked.
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜But you’ve had piano lessons? Music lessons?’
    He shook his head, impatient. ‘Again, Grandpa. Again.’
    â€˜All right. But perhaps you could put your trousers on first?’
    He watched me for a moment, considering the request.
    â€˜Afterwards.’
    â€˜Promise?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    And so we played again. Me seated upright on the piano stool and Robin standing beside me in his underpants, only just able to reach the keys. I glanced over at his fingers and sawhow the melody slipped from his fingertips, easy as water, and I observed what beautiful hands he had – small, still a child’s hands, but with the long fingers of a real pianist. He looked at me and, for the first time I could remember, he smiled, and it was a drunken smile of beatific joy.

New Year’s Day, 1947
    T he following morning dawns colder still. The channels of condensation on the inside of the windowpanes in my bedroom have frozen fast. Even lying in bed in my clothes I shiver. Deciding to give up on sleep, I sling on a dressing gown and, grabbing a blanket off my bed for good measure, hurry downstairs in search of a cup of tea or a glass of whisky – anything to warm me up. I’ve always liked being the first awake in a house full of sleepers. I know that one day Hartgrove Hall, along with her third-rate furniture and mouldering pictures, her farms and rivers, will go to Jack, but in those moments before anyone else is awake, she is mine. Even when he is master of the house and married with fat children squabbling through the halls, he won’t be able to inherit these moments. As a boy on my first morning home from prep school for the holidays, I’d get up before it was light and revisit every room, staying long enough to throw off the sensation of unfamiliarity, the stranger returned. I’d stray outside onto the lawn in my pyjamas and bare feet, feeling the dew between my toes, and watch dawn fire along the river.
    I hurry into the kitchen and find to my regret that I’m not the earliest riser this morning. Chivers is trying to shoo George and Edie from the kitchen. Before the war none of us would have dared to venture