The Song of Hartgrove Hall by Natasha Solomons Page A

There’s nothing better for remembering. The songs from a place, the ones that grow there and have been sung down the generations, those are the ones that capture the essence of it. They’re like the specific smell of river mud, except that when you’re away from the river you can’t quite recall it precisely.’
    â€˜And Jack? What did Jack take?’
    â€˜I don’t know. Nothing, Jack never gets homesick, as far as I can tell. Wherever he goes, he’s the centre of it all, magnificently present, never pining for anywhere else.’
    She makes no reply, knowing it to be true.
    â€˜The tunes are often the same but, if you listen carefully enough, you spot a variation in the last verse and the words inevitably change from singer to singer. The best folk songs are living things, shifting with each performance. You can never really catch them.’
    â€˜But you still try?’
    I laugh. ‘Of course.’
    Old Lodder doesn’t mind that I’ve brought Edie. In fact, it rather perks him up. He looks right past me but ushers her inside to the coolness of the cottage, seating her in the best chair by the window with a view of the vegetable patch and its row of exquisite green lettuces squatting in the earth. In the distance the river glints and I can hear goldcrests squabbling in the bulrushes.
    Lodder is so tall and angular, it’s a wonder he fits into the low cottage – he’s hunching as he disappears into the kitchen concealed behind a fading curtain. It’s cramped and dark in the parlour, the walls painted brown in the Victorian fashion of seventy years earlier and the low beams stained darker still. There’s a milking stool, two good chairs, a solid and handsome dresser on which is displayed a hotchpotch of mismatching china. The only picture on the wall is a photograph of a stern, austere woman buttoned into a high-necked gown. I can’t tell whether it was his grandmother, mother or wife. The room smells very strongly of cabbage. An overflowing bucket of vegetable peelings and slops perspires nicely beside the range. To my excitement, there is no wireless and I’m hopeful of finding a good song hoard, full of old tunes, not just popular hits. I arrange my manuscript pad on my knee and sharpen my pencil.
    â€˜What happens next?’ whispers Edie, conscious of Lodder busily brewing tea like a magician behind the partition curtain.
    â€˜I’ll ask him to sing us some songs. Hopefully there’ll be something we haven’t heard before and, if there is, I’ll write it down.’
    â€˜Do you write down the melody or the words?’
    â€˜I try to do both. I sometimes get in a bit of a muddle.’
    â€˜Let me help. Give me a page and I’ll try to scribble downthe words. I don’t think I could manage the tune accurately enough. I don’t have perfect pitch like you.’
    Before I can ask how she can tell that I have perfect pitch – which I do; it’s a source of both satisfaction and irritation – Lodder reappears with a tea tray laden with chipped teacups and a saucer of stale biscuits. Dutifully we sip. He sits on the milking stool apparently perfectly comfortable, his spindly legs folded up beside his ears like a daddy-longlegs.
    â€˜This one’s fer you, missy,’ he says, grinning at Edie, and he launches into a rendition of Edie’s most celebrated hit, ‘A Shropshire Thrush’. I sag and rub my eyes. It was a mistake to have brought her with me. We listen politely. It never does to interrupt.
    â€˜That was very pleasant, Mr Lodder,’ I say.
    â€˜An honour to sing it fer the lady,’ he declares, clearly pleased as Punch with himself. ‘I never thought I’d see the day. Never thought it.’
    â€˜But we’d love – Miss Rose would love to hear one of your own songs. Your nephew told me that you know some Dorset folk songs.’
    He frowned.