February 1948

I want to be in a place where no one knows me, preferably drunk. I can’t bear polite enquiries and sympathetic smiles. Defeated and humiliated, I want to lick my wounds in peace. I end up in London, simply another face in the crowd. I head east because it’s cheap and I’m perilously low on funds. This part of the city, battered and broken, suits my frame of mind. There are no new buildings pushing up amidst the bomb craters and grime. No one here even notices the wreckage any longer. I find a nice old pub near Brick Lane, the only building left standing in a sea of rubble, moored amongst the craters like a lone ship, where the landlord lets me play the piano during opening hours and keep any tips. It’s a rickety, irritable instrument and I like it. The bar was frequented by black American soldiers during the war. When I find drawing pins pressed into all the tiny hammers inside the piano, I realise it must have been used for jazz. I wonder what happened to those Yankee jazz players and shake off my wretchedness long enough to wish I could have heard them.

I feel the odd twinge of guilt about taking the car. I’m careful not to use the word ‘steal’. I did not steal, as it was mine to begin with – at least in part. I estimate that a third of the rattling, decrepit Austin belonged to me. The steering wheel and the broken hubcaps must be mine. In any case, they’ll have bought another by now – there was plenty of money from the concert. A nagging internal voice reminds me that the concert cash was supposed to be George’s cow money.

I edge away from thoughts of George. Awkward, taciturn, noble George who pines for Edie without complaint. George, who ploughs his unhappiness and longing into furrows along the side of the hill. The muddy ridges and ruts carved into the eastern slopes of Hartgrove Hill are the only sign of George’s sorrow.

To hell with George and his silent love. I don’t want George as my companion in this. It makes us both ridiculous. And I won’t pity him. I couldn’t bear to be pitied myself and I won’t insult him with sympathy. I tuck away all thoughts of Hartgrove Hall and the green expanse of the hill, the way the field slopes and curves beneath the church like the smooth hollow of a woman’s back. And yet, in my sleep, I walk Ringmoor in the dark. I hear the ring of ancient feet, of boots on stone, the whisper of the larch trees in the rain. I follow Edie’s footprints in the snow but somewhere amongst the rustling woods, I lose her and wake, empty and adrift.

I have grandiose plans of using my melancholy to fuel my symphony but I’m too miserable to write. I’d always thought that sadness was useful for an artist but either I’m the wrong sort of artist or it’s the wrong sort of misery. A dreary flatness settles over me, thick as fog, and nothing penetrates. Nothing except for gin or whisky, even beer – as long as I drink enough of it, which I do assiduously. My cash runs out and I make no more than pennies playing the piano so I take a job behind the bar. At the end of each week there is precious little left once my drinks have been taken out of my pay and I take to sleeping in my car. I’m torn between wishing that Edie could see what she’s driven me to and being relieved that she can’t.

Weeks turn into months. Still I don’t write and tell them where I am. At first I’m too mortified. I’m scraped out and the hollow inside is filled with anger at Edie, at Jack. While the heat goes out of my rage, like a sun-baked stone cooling at dusk, the hurt never disappears. Besides, too much time has passed and now I can’t write. I begin, in my mind at least, a dozen letters but I can’t think of what to say, so I say nothing at all. I alternate between wanting to know how they are battling with the farm and profound relief that I never hear their names.

Winter sinks into spring, warm and grubby. It is not the same here amongst the grey ruins and smoke-filled skies. There are no curlews nor snowdrops. There is no hawthorn blossom nor crocuses. I feel only the easing of the cold. When I wake one morning my car windows are not smudged with frost. I wake with the first light, which comes later now. I trudge into the pub to wash – the landlady kindly lets me use the outside toilet and allows me to bathe twice a week, all for a few shillings. Afterwards I walk the streets, breakfasting on a bagel and trying not to think of Edie. She’s a wound that I pick at. Even though today was a bath day, already I feel grimy, my skin covered in grit and a sprinkling of smuts.

On the pavements, hawkers peddle their wares: old clothes, broken or mended kettles, mismatched cutlery, cauliflowers, potatoes, bottles of milk, bottles of nothing, snatches of sheet music, penny-dreadfuls, dried fish, fresh fish, rotten fish. Bare-legged children weave amongst them, dawdling on their way to school or to skip school. Mothers push babies or heave shopping bags or squabble with the traders. I toss my bagel to a gaunt-eyed girl of about seven or eight who snatches it, and clutches it close, uneaten. If I came here believing that it would help me to understand Edie better, to be closer to her, it doesn’t and I’m not.

I return to the pub in time to open up. The regulars are queuing outside. I pour them drinks and hide my own behind the counter. That’s the landlord’s only rule. I mustn’t be openly drunk and I mustn’t have a drink set out on the bar. A girl walks in. She’s blonde and too nice-looking for a place like this.

‘I’m sorry, miss,’ I say. ‘I’m afraid you’re lost.’

‘So are you,’ says Sal in her soft Texan accent.

I’m caught between indignation and embarrassment. She shouldn’t be here and I’m put out that she is.

‘What can I get you?’ I say. I don’t want to quarrel.

‘Gin and lime.’

I pour it for her. She sips it slowly and shudders, raising a perfectly pencilled eyebrow. I notice that her hair is that garish daffodil yellow again.

‘Well?’ she demands.

I shrug and pretend to be occupied behind the bar.

‘Well, how’re you doin’? You don’t look so good. What a dive.’ She wrinkles her nose delicately and I hand her a cigarette.

‘Here. To mask the smell. I suppose Edie sent you.’

There’s a burning sensation in my chest. I haven’t said her name aloud since I left.

‘Afraid not, Fox.’

No one’s called me Fox for a while. Here I’m simply Harry.

‘One of Jack’s pals spotted you. It was Jack who asked me to look in on you.’

Humiliation blooms. I’m not a recalcitrant child. Another part of me is hurt he didn’t come himself. His concern clearly has limits.

‘I’m not going back.’

‘Never said you should. I’ve come to take you to a concert.’

She places a flyer on the bar. St Matthew Passion, St Martin-in-the-Fields, conductor Marcus Albright.

‘So you can report back to Jack, I suppose.’

‘Is that so dreadful? To have people who mind about you?’

I’ve a filthy headache brewing, and I want desperately for her to leave.

‘I’m busy.’

‘Well, get un-busy.’

‘I’m sorry, Sal. It’s jolly decent of you to drop by and all that but I’m afraid that I really can’t go.’

‘I’ll pick you up at six. Wear a clean shirt.’

She gives me one last hard stare, then slithers off the bar stool and stalks out.

At six-thirty we’re sitting side by side on the bus to Piccadilly. It’s crammed and I hastily relinquish my seat to a mother and her green-nosed tot with considerable eagerness as it means I can’t talk to Sal. I’m feeling grim from the lurching by the time we climb off the bus near Piccadilly.

‘Let’s find a pub,’ I say. ‘I could do with a drink.’

‘No,’ says Sal. ‘No more drinking. You can take me to the Lyons Corner House for an early supper.’

I find myself being propelled along the Haymarket and into the restaurant where we have a dubious meal of potted ham, sloppy potatoes and wet vegetables. I don’t eat much, but watch as Sal wolfs down everything. She’s rake thin but has the appetite of a teenage boy. If I were in a less foul frame of mind, I’d say that it’s oddly attractive.

‘Do you know Marcus Albright?’ she asks, wiping her mouth with her napkin and setting down her cutlery with a sorrowful little sigh.

‘No, not personally. I admire him of course.’

‘Well, you should know him. I’m sure you’ll like him. Let’s get dessert. Shall we get dessert? I love English puddings.’

Before I can answer she’s summoned the waitress and orders two spotted dicks and custard, a pudding I’ve loathed since school. She eats hers and then embarks on mine.

‘I have four brothers back home,’ she says. ‘You learn to eat fast with not much talking or someone will scoop it right off your plate.’

Even Sal is too full for coffee. We hurry to Trafalgar Square. I used to come here to lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery during the war. I liked to hear Myra Hess’s piano recitals. It was always a strange experience – the gallery bereft of pictures, and music taking the place of the missing paintings. I’d come up once in a while during the school hols and there were always queues crocodiling along the street – servicemen were allowed to skip to the front while I always had to wait ignominiously in line with the women and children. I’d longed for the day when I too would be able to stroll to the front in my uniform, the ladies urging me forward. I’d not hankered after much in those days except for a green army jacket and the whiff of adventure. At the thought of my earlier self, I recoil, discomfited.

The queue is still here but this evening it wriggles along the other side of Trafalgar Square, outside St Martin-in-the-Fields. Vast banners billowing on either side of the church doors advertise ‘Marcus Albright’ and I experience both admiration and huge, gut-piercing envy. He’s the youngest conductor ever to perform with the London Phil and it’s rumoured that the Americans want him for the New York Philharmonic. We join the end of the line and wait. All around us couples chatter and laugh. We are silent. After a few minutes of quiet shuffling, I can bear it no longer.

‘I must find a loo. Give me my ticket, I’ll see you in there.’

I’m not being very gallant but Sal gives in without a fuss, surrendering a ticket. I hurry around the corner, looking for a gents. I consider slipping into a pub for a swift half before the concert – Lord knows I could do with one – but guilt gets the better of me and after using a particularly unsavoury public lavatory I hurry back to the church. The queue has evaporated and from the open doors I can hear the sound of the orchestra tuning up, which always fills me with the tingle of anticipation; it’s better than any aperitif. It’s not quite seven-thirty and I still have time to find my seat. For the first time this evening I’m glad that Sal has hauled me here.

‘Ticket please, sir.’

I reach into my pocket and, scrabbling, find nothing. To my dismay I realise it must have slipped out in the gents and is now probably lying on the floor beside a urinal.

‘I’m terribly sorry. I seem to have misplaced it.’

The usher notices me properly and recoils slightly. My dishevelled appearance doesn’t match my voice. I probably still smell of booze and my shirt is not as clean as it ought to be.

‘That’s a pity, sir. That there is the line for returns. Doesn’t seem likely now but you might get lucky.’

I glance to where he’s pointing and see a queue of twenty people, fidgeting and checking their watches. None of them is going to see this concert and neither, by the looks of it, am I.

I try to jostle past him. ‘Please. I really did have a ticket. My friend is inside. At least let me tell her what’s happened. I don’t want her to worry.’

The usher is surprisingly solid. ‘Thing is, sir, I’ve heard all the tricks. I want a quiet night. Why don’t you do us both a favour and just eff off?’

On balance this does seem like the best option. I leave and go to sit in the square. I could easily go to a pub, but somehow I don’t. The fountains are filled with water for the first time since I can remember. It’s another kind of music and it reminds me of the winterbourne streams that break across the fields after heavy rain. I’m struck with a pang of homesickness so fierce and sharp that it’s like a hunger pain and I momentarily double up.

I smoke five cigarettes and watch the traffic curl around me. Big Ben chimes the half-hour. I wonder whether Sal will try to find me during the interval, so I hurry back up the steps and linger near the doors but the beastly usher is there and I can tell he’s still got his eye on me. Sal doesn’t come out. I should probably leave but I can’t face going back to the dingy pub, and I don’t want Sal to think that I’ve stood her up, so I return to the fountain and wait.

The traffic quietens and I can hear wisps of sound from the concert but it’s underwater music, distorted and unpleasant. The sun sinks behind the Thames and it suddenly gets cold. A mizzle of rain starts to fall, spotting the pavements. I shiver and wrap my arms around myself, cursing my carelessness. I could be sitting in a warm church and listening to fine music instead of freezing out here. I could also do with a decent mackintosh. Ruefully, I picture for the umpteenth time the smart mackintosh hanging on its peg in the gunroom at Hartgrove Hall.

At last, concert-goers start to file out. I nip across the road and force my way inside against a tide of large women smelling strongly of rosewater, lavender and lily of the valley – I’m elbowing my way through a bosomy herbaceous border. They mutter crossly. I catch a glimpse of yellow hair and see Sal disappearing through a side door off the chancel. Ignoring the ladies’ angry mutterings, I push my way through the ample hordes. Reaching the door, I discover it’s locked and hammer on it with my fists. A musician appears, his bow tie dangling loose, violin in one hand, glass in the other. He looks me up and down.

‘I suppose you’re a pal of Marcus?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ I say, with barely a moment’s hesitation, and follow him into the vestry.

A party is well under way. I notice Sal in close conversation with a man whom I recognise as Marcus Albright himself. He spots me first and stiffens, like a cat spying a robin. It sounds ridiculous but I hadn’t appreciated how young he is. I’d read in all the papers the lists of his grand achievements before the age of thirty, feeling rather envious, but I’d consoled myself with the fact that twenty-nine was almost middle-aged and that I had heaps of time to do something marvellous myself before I reached such an age. Now, looking at the slender, boyish figure conspiring with Sal, I realise that he seems hardly older than me. I decide I don’t like him at all. He smiles and waves me over. Imperious so and so, I say to myself. Thinks he’s so high and mighty.

‘Did you like the concert?’ he demands with an easy smile, confident of my response.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I was too cold to like anything.’

His face falls and I feel almost bad but really I’m pleased that my opinion matters at all. Sal elbows me sharply in the ribs.

‘Ignore him, Marcus. He’s having you on. He skipped out on me and didn’t hear a single note. What the hell happened to you?’

I try not to laugh. Sal’s a different breed from the reticent English gals. She always says exactly what she thinks, often in somewhat coarse language. I’d forgotten how much I approve of Sal. However, she looks genuinely cross, her hands planted on her hips.

‘I’m terribly sorry, old thing. Must have dropped my ticket on the floor of the lav. Wretched usher wouldn’t let me in.’

‘You should have used my name,’ says Marcus, still looking at me appraisingly. I’m uncomfortable under his scrutiny.

‘Well, might have been a bit tricky. I didn’t know you until five ticks ago.’

‘No. But now we’re going to be excellent chums, I’m sure of it.’ He slips his arm through mine and steers me to a table where a bar has been set up with gin and sticky bottles of lime syrup.

‘We’ll stay here for one and then we’ll go on to the Langham. I expect that’s more your scene.’

‘Oh, yes please,’ says Sal, appearing at my elbow. ‘I’m starving.’

I look at Sal with wonder and then survey the grubby vestry with some regret. I’d much prefer to stay here, swigging gin with the second violins, than sip champagne in a smart hotel.

But then I discover that everything with Marcus is fun. Despite my present gloom, I find myself laughing. It feels strange and unfamiliar. Marcus discreetly pays for everything without condescension or show. We drink champagne and eat oysters although oddly, for the first evening in God knows how long, I don’t feel drunk.

Sometime after midnight, Marcus turns to me, his eyes bright.

‘So you’re a composer?’

The gloom returns. I feel all the candles in the shining Langham bar gutter out one by one. I shake my head.

‘Want to be. I’m stuck. And I’m not sure whether I’m really good enough to bother about getting unstuck.’

‘The Morning Post and the Western Gazette seem to think you are.’

‘You read the reviews?’

Marcus shrugs and slurps another oyster. ‘Sal showed me. I like to keep track of all my rivals.’

I perk up, delighted, but Marcus laughs, putting me back in my place. ‘You’re not a rival yet, but I like to be prepared.’

There were two very short reviews of the concert at Hartgrove Hall. It’s only because of Edie that the critics took any notice at all. They mostly commented on the eccentricity of the occasion and weren’t terribly complimentary about my own piece.

‘“Muddy orchestration. Overcomplication in the string section,”’ I quote in my best ‘man from the papers’ voice.

‘They were nice about Edie,’ counters Sal. ‘“Edie Rose never sounded better. A different style for the young lady but very satisfactory nonetheless.”’

‘A singer’s only as good as the song.’ Marcus grins, a frank, open smile. He is a hard fellow to dislike.

‘There was a decent photo of you too,’ he adds, reaching for the last oyster, only to find Sal already taking it. ‘Good grief, girl, I pity the husband that’s going to have to pay to feed you,’ he says, surrendering.

Sal laughs, but I can tell she’s hurt.

We talk for a while longer, or rather they talk and I listen. To my relief they don’t mention Edie again. It’s a grubby thing, to love your brother’s wife. It’s biblical and hopeless and thoroughly unpleasant. I wonder whether Edie has told Sal. I expect not. She’s horribly discreet. And even if she had, why would Sal tell Marcus? I’m fooling myself to think that the world is concerned about my own small miseries.

‘So you’re really coming?’ says Sal, her eyes bright.

I’ve not heard a word. ‘I beg your pardon?’ I ask.

‘Of course he is,’ says Marcus. ‘It’s all decided. We’ll stay up till dawn, and catch the first train.’

‘The train to where?’ I ask, with the feeling that it has already left the station.

‘Scotland,’ says Marcus.

Marcus has rented a small house on the Ardnamurchan peninsula, purportedly to find some peace and quiet to write music and study next season’s scores. However, he has also invited a ragtag assortment of pals to visit, so there never is any quiet. I see Marcus neither write nor study.

The sheer beauty of the place catches me off guard. We’re at the westernmost tip of the mainland but it feels like an island. The sand is moon white, the waters are as clear as glass and, when the sun shines, they shimmer, a bold Renaissance blue that is Mediterranean and distinctly un-British. Sheep meander through coarse marram grass that sprouts stiffly along the beach. The dunes run for miles, sand spraying like mist in the wind. At low tide the sea recedes to the mouth of the bay, leaving shallow pools of glinting water. For days on end we spy no one but each other and the teeming birds – gulls, cormorants and even, now and again, a vast, red-dashed sea eagle.

In the stillness, I consider unhappily whether my leaving Hartgrove was entirely due to Jack and Edie. Disliking myself, I wonder whether part of my desire to leave was ambition. Those few horrid months of farming showed me how much I despise it. Staying at Hartgrove and working the estate would be the right thing to do, the moral choice, yet I simply can’t do it. I have to write. It’s ironic, then, how stuck I am. Now with peace and time to compose, I stutter and flail. I contemplate, grimly, the possibility that my inspiration comes from Hartgrove. Like Antaeus, my strength flows directly from the soil and, when separated from it, I stultify.

I’d understood that in Scotland it was always raining, but for the first week we have nothing but glorious sunshine. The cottage is a whitewashed stone croft on the edge of the beach. At high tide the waters lick around its garden of heather and at night it’s like being adrift on a boat, the sea echoing through the dark. It’s too big for me. The rhythm of the waves and the grind of the sand push out my own thoughts, showing them to be silly and small. Nothing but twiddles and trifles.

Each tide carries new visitors to the cottage and takes others away. After a few days I stop attempting to learn their names; they never stay more than a day or two before the small striped fishing boat ferries them away again. Marcus, Sal and I are the only visitors who remain day after day. There’s a prevailing carnival, last-day-of-term feeling amongst the others but I feel like an actor in a play, saying my lines but knowing it’s all hopelessly pretend. Marcus and his friends rise late and wander out into the garden to sit on the small terrace overlooking the water, draping themselves in blankets or beach towels against the cool, northerly breeze. The talk is rambunctious and incessant: of music and sex. Usually I’d delight in such conversation but I can’t quite bring myself to join in. As the others pad outside to the terrace with mugs of coffee, I disappear off to the beach to pace the strand and watch the surf. I tell Marcus that I’m working on something – it’s a fib but I need to be left alone.

To my relief, the air smells different from at home. There’s a smell of salt and as the tide withdraws, leaving a green ooze of seaweed and slime, there’s the stench of decaying fish, but beneath that there’s the scent of heather and of wild herbs I don’t recognise. The birds are different too. The dawn chorus is full of other voices, awash with strange songs. I’m far away from everything I’ve known and the relief is enormous.

The sharp sea wind catches me off guard, and as I gulp greedy lungfuls, I feel a space opening up inside me. For months there’s been nothing but a void filled with self-loathing but as the salt air rushes through me it drives out the image of Edie. For a moment I feel stillness inside myself, like a pause between concerto movements. After a minute the restlessness returns but it has changed tone. I need to do something. I’m fed up with drifting, afloat on misery and self-pity. The unfamiliar songs of the birds give me an idea – perhaps I ought to collect a few songs from here. I’ve not collected anything for months. I question whether that, as much as unhappiness, has blocked my writing. I’ve stopped mixing paint for my palette, yet I’m complaining that I don’t have any interesting colours.

‘You look cheery this morning,’ says Sal, striding towards me in her green slacks, straggles of hair whipping out like yellow ribbons behind her.

Sal is the only person whom I don’t mind meeting on my walks. She knows when to talk and when to be quiet.

She stops a couple of yards from me and prods a shell with her toe, then yawns and stretches, showing her smooth midriff, the sunlight catching the fine down on her belly. I want to reach out and stroke it with my fingers. I can’t tell whether she’s teasing me deliberately. I realise that I’d very much like to sleep with her. I’ve still not slept with a girl. I feel embarrassed and backward about the whole thing. The chat amongst the others brims with misadventures on tour – tales of furious landladies and slamming doors, and while I doubt how much of it can possibly be true, I listen with apprehension, dreading the moment when I’m called upon for my own dubious anecdote.

‘I’m going collecting today,’ I say.

‘Jolly good. We’re short for lunch. Crab or scallops?’

‘Songs.’

‘Oh?’

She studies me for a moment, shading her eyes against the glare of the morning sun. Her feet are bare, the sand white against her toes, almost like snow. I notice that she’s wearing a navy-blue sweater knotted around her waist, the coarse-knitted island kind that’s supposed to repel water. I’ve seen the other chaps stare at Sal and make clumsy attempts to flirt, but she bats them away like moths, barely seeming to acknowledge their interest. I don’t much like my own chances. She isn’t pretty, not like Edie; her mouth is too wide and her brown eyes too far apart, but there’s certainly something attractive about her. Perhaps it’s the bold, American confidence. She smacks of the new world, of fresh possibilities. Her clothes are bright and unfaded. Even when she wears drab utility trousers and a man’s sweater, on Sal it looks like a costume or a pose, a decision instead of a defeat.

‘You can come with me, if you like,’ I say. ‘You can try to write down the words of the song if we find a singer.’

‘All right.’ I reckoned she’d come, but I find that I’m pleased, more pleased than I’d expected.

‘We should probably try one of the local pubs. I wonder whether Marcus knows if there’s a singing pub nearby.’

I’m being optimistic. The nearest village is a huddle of dwellings somewhere between cottages and hovels, all of which are in unfortunate states of repair. The war has not been kind to this part of the highlands. The men left and the younger fellows mostly chose not to return. The place contains widows, old men, children and fish. When we venture into the village to raid the shop for supplies, they watch us, unsmiling and mistrustful. However, I admit to myself with a prickling feeling that I don’t mind if the excursion is a wild-goose chase. I like the prospect of spending a drowsy early summer’s day with Sal. She glances at me and grins, revealing a small gap between her front teeth. It’s odd, I decide, how these assorted collections of small flaws in a face can make someone terribly attractive. It dawns on me that I want to sleep with Sal with considerably more urgency than I wish to collect traditional Scottish songs.

We return to the cottage to find the others have dragged the furniture onto the beach and are lazing on an armchair and a sofa at the top of the strand. It looks quite peculiar, as though the little sitting room has simply been transported, the shoddy oil seascape that hangs on the cottage wall being replaced with the beach itself. I half expect to see the matted rug and the oil lamps on their side tables. I don’t expect the landlord will be too pleased but Marcus doesn’t seem to bother about such things. He sits with his legs dangling over the armrest of the chair, wrapped in his dressing gown, humming.

‘What-ho?’ he calls.

‘Fox is taking me song collecting,’ says Sal.

‘I am indeed,’ I say, trying to keep the note of satisfaction from my voice.

‘Oh yes?’

I join them in the sitting-room-on-the-beach. ‘Do you know of any singing pubs? Or someone I could ask about singers?’

Marcus wrinkles his brow. ‘You could ask Mrs Partick.’ When I gaze at him blankly, he adds, ‘The rather sweet old thing who cooks for us and cleans up our dreadful mess. She’ll be here ten-ish.’

‘It’s nearly twelve,’ I say.

Marcus laughs uproariously. ‘Gosh, laziness is thoroughly exhausting.’

But he’s already up and moving. He’s a man always in motion, like a metronome. If he’s still, it’s only the rest between notes. Clasping in his hands a stash of manuscript paper, he jogs into the waves with it, still in his dressing gown, pyjamas and slippers. In a second he’s thoroughly soaked but he takes no notice. With a shout, he throws the papers up into the air and the sheets flutter down to the surface of the water to float like a shoal of dead fish, belly up.

‘What are you doing?’ I call, hurrying down to join him, although I do remove my shoes and socks before crashing into the surf.

Marcus lights a bedraggled cigarette and wistfully surveys the flotsam and jetsam bobbing around him. ‘I was up writing all last night. Utter tosh. I told myself that I should carry on regardless. If I decided it was still drivel in the morning, then I’d burn the whole thing.’ He smiles at me ruefully. ‘I think I should have burned it after all. We’re awfully low on kindling and this gesture wasn’t quite as dramatic as I’d hoped.’

Wads of sodden paper stick to our legs while some wash up on the sand. The others are all laughing; it’s a bit of a lark – a daft story to tell about Marcus Albright when they get home. He chucks his cigarette into the ocean, half smoked, and crashes back up the strand. Beneath the jovial banter, he’s furious, enraged by his own creative impotence. He reaches out and grabs my arm.

‘Can I come with you? I need a change of scene.’

I’m torn. The chap looks stricken but I was anticipating with some considerable pleasure a day alone with Sal, wondering how I could conceivably combine song collecting with a swim. It might be tawdry, but I’d very much like to see Sal in her brassiere and knickers. Marcus senses my hesitation.

‘I won’t get in your way, old chap. Pretty thing but not my type at all. Think you might be hers, though.’

At once I’m overcome with gratitude, as though any tenderness Sal might feel towards me is entirely owing to Marcus. I shake his hand warmly.

‘Yes, of course you must come. Be glad to have you.’

It’s a relief to leave the others behind, carousing. They’re a motley gang of musicians who’ve played with Marcus over the years, jovial and raucous fellows who’ve spent so long on tour that they’ve lost all notion of and desire for home. Providing they have their instruments and a cold glass of something, they’re quite content or so it seems. Decent as they are, I’m glad to have Sal and even Marcus to myself. As we walk along the snaking path through the dunes, in companionable silence, I sense their relief too.

I turn to Sal.

‘Do you miss Texas?’

‘Yes. But as soon as I’m there, I’m desperate to be anywhere else.’

We check inside the cottage for Mrs Partick but she has already left. Opening the larder, we spy two poached salmon and a salad for supper under a mesh.

‘Damn it,’ says Marcus. ‘Suppose we could walk into the village and knock on a few doors. Hope for the best.’

‘It’s Sunday. We could catch them after church,’ I say. ‘I’ve found chaps that way before. We ought really to go to the service and listen out for any likely singers.’

‘Church it is,’ declares Marcus, rubbing his hands.

We set back off across the dunes. We’re not really dressed for church. Sal insisted upon changing out of her slacks into a green cotton dress, which, I can’t help but notice, clings intriguingly to her bare legs. Marcus and I swelter in wool jackets and unironed shirts. I try to hide the worst of the creases with my tie but, looking at Marcus who’s attempted the same, I concede it’s not terribly successful.

The church is a low building with harled white walls and a plain grey roof. It squats alone amongst the gorse, solemn and standoffish. The haze of the morning has burned off into a warm blue day but the doors of the church are firmly closed. It’s apparent that we’re late and the service has already started.

‘Let’s go back. We can talk to Mrs Partick tomorrow,’ I say, ready to suggest a swim instead.

‘Not at all,’ says Marcus, grabbing both our arms and propelling us towards the church.

‘We should wait until they come out,’ I say.

‘We can’t go inside in the middle of a service,’ says Sal, trying to shake Marcus off, but he laughs, quite undeterred, and urges us forward like a father with recalcitrant children.

‘Don’t be such spoilsports. I’m in the mood for God and then a song.’

Ignoring our grumbles, he thrusts open the doors of the church with a bang. Marcus has a penchant for the dramatic whether it’s Beethoven at the Royal Albert Hall or Sunday morning in Ardnamurchan.

Forty pale faces beneath forty dark hats swivel to look at us, open-mouthed and agog. The minister splutters, outraged. He’s aloft in the pulpit, arms held wide, and we’ve clearly interrupted a grand moment. The congregation look torn between shock and profound interest. A small child in pigtails is forcibly made to face the front by her mother, who hisses a reprimand. Sal has the grace to be embarrassed. She smiles, blushing at the ladies and gentlemen, who turn away, appalled. Marcus strolls up the centre aisle and slides into a pew near the back.

‘Don’t mind us. Do carry on, my good man.’ He waves cheerfully at the parson.

The minister, a small man with nimbus clouds of white hair, stares at us with fixed horror as though Satan himself had strolled into his church, arm in arm with the whore of Babylon and rattling a cocktail shaker. He’s evidently quite lost his train of thought. I sit beside Marcus, who settles himself, smiling expectantly. The minister fixes us with a look of profound dislike and then, stirring himself and clasping both sides of the rostrum, he resumes his sermon with a great revving throttle of phlegm and spittle.

‘Sinners repent or you will burn. Burn. Bu–rrn!’ he exclaims, rolling his Rs with an impressive, percussive rumble.

At the conclusion of twenty-five minutes of sin, hellfire and fury, he pauses, spent and breathless. His white hair is plastered to his cheeks with sweat and his countenance is as red as the fiery pits he’s described in such thrilling detail. The congregation nod and murmur their approval. This isn’t sufficient for Marcus who’s clearly enjoyed the whole performance immensely.

‘Hear, hear!’ he shouts from the back, rising to his feet, clapping loudly. ‘Splendid.’

‘I do like a bit of passion,’ he whispers to Sal and me, not at all quietly. ‘I liked the bit about buggery. Very rousing.’

Sal hushes him. ‘No one applauds sermons.’

‘You’re American. Things are different here,’ says Marcus.

‘No. They don’t applaud them in England either,’ says Sal, firmly, trying to shush him.

‘It really isn’t done,’ I agree.

‘Well, it is by me,’ huffs Marcus, unabashed.

While I’m amused, I think it rather doubtful that any of these people will sing for us now. The service is concluded. There is no music nor singing of any kind. We join the throng and follow them out into the brisk sunshine. It’s a glorious day, hot and cloudless. A fat seagull basks atop the war memorial and the threatened hellfire seems unlikely.

‘Splendid service,’ says Marcus, clasping the minister by the hand.

The minister grimaces, muttering begrudging thanks while trying to extricate his hand. The parishioners circle, curious.

‘We’re looking for some singers and musicians,’ says Marcus, beaming round at the crowd. ‘We’d like to hear some old songs of Scotland.’

The minister quivers and closes his eyes. ‘Today is the La-rd’s day,’ he declares.

‘Yes, jolly good,’ says Marcus, his smile becoming fixed and tight.

‘We do not make music on the La-rd’s day. It’s a day of prayer. Prayer and contrition.’

‘Oh, I’m terribly contrite,’ says Marcus. ‘But we must have music, mustn’t we, Fox?’

I nod. I’m always on the side of music, whatever the argument, whatever the consequences. ‘I’m afraid so.’

The minister can take no more. He turns to his parishioners, blazing with righteous fury. ‘No immodest songs. No sinful songs filled with lust. No songs for these’ – he reaches for a word sufficiently damning – ‘English gentlemen.’

The parishioners shake their heads – they wouldn’t dream of it, not at all. Sal takes Marcus’s hand and gently draws him away. I follow, finding myself both amused and irritated. We meander back to the cottage.

‘I’m not sure that you have a future as a song collector, old sport,’ I say. ‘The trick is to coax it out of them.’

‘Bugger them. Sod the lot of them,’ declares Marcus and I realise that he’s filled with a bright anger. I can almost see it bounce off his skin like the glare on the surface of the water in the bay. ‘We’re having music on the bloody beach tonight,’ he announces.

He stops walking and turns to face Sal and me, squinting in the harsh midday sun.

‘Are you Christians?’

I shrug and shake my head. ‘Sorry. Pagan agnostic,’ I say, not because it’s really true but because I heard someone say it once and I liked the sound of it. Religion to me means dull mumblings in a frigid church while my stomach gurgles in expectation of Sunday lunch. I associate God with tedium and the anticipation of Yorkshire pudding.

‘I’m a Christian,’ says Sal.

‘And so am I,’ says Marcus. ‘And I’ll be damned to hell before I let any dead-hearted Presbyterian shit of a minister tell me that God doesn’t like music. God is in the music. Any savage knows that.’

We reach the cottage garden where the gang are still lolling on the furniture on the beach.

‘Rehearsals, Vivaldi’s Gloria. Twenty minutes,’ snaps Marcus.

The assorted guests pause for a moment, watching him, and then, grasping that he’s transformed from affable host to conductor, they rise and return to the house, metamorphosing themselves from idle sunbathers into musicians, albeit reluctant ones. Sal and I do not have instruments, and I’m not quite sure how we fit into all this. I’m just starting to wonder whether perhaps this might be a good moment for us to slope off together and go for that swim when Marcus turns to us, cool and unsmiling.

‘You’ll sing treble,’ he says to Sal. ‘And you,’ he says, looking at me, ‘are the tenor.’

With a sigh, I accept that even though the part is hopelessly beyond me, it’s pointless to refuse.

Marcus conjures scores from a trunk in his bedroom. I understand now why all his clothes are so crumpled and grubby. He has brought only a couple of shirts with him; the remainder of his luggage is taken up with music – not merely the score but parts for each instrument in the orchestra. A dozen of us are staying at the cottage – in addition to Marcus, myself and Sal, there are five violins, a viola, a clarinet, an oboe and a cellist. Marcus bemoans the lack of flutes and absence of a double bass.

‘And it really is too bad that there isn’t a harpsichord.’

None of us dares to remark how ludicrous this is. I picture a harpsichord strapped to the lurching fishing boat, and want to laugh. The moment Marcus picks up his baton he gains gravitas and power. He holds instant authority, and we obey him instinctively and immediately as though he were wielding a pistol as opposed to a switch of wood. The piece also requires a full choir, not a single soprano and a tenor of limited skill, but I don’t question him about that either.

He thrusts a score at Sal. ‘Here. Go and practise. Help Fox. Come back in a couple of hours to play it through with the orchestra. We’ll have the “Domine Deus” and the “Qui Sedes”.’

Now as Sal leads me away, I follow her with a feeling of utter dread; all my delicious excitement has been thoroughly trampled. I’m furious with Marcus for inflicting this upon me and furious with myself for not pointing out to him that I’m quite incapable of singing such a part. Even if I had a month to prepare, I wouldn’t be up to it.

Sal, sensing my despondency, slides her hand into mine.

‘Don’t worry. Ignore the bluster. It’s only for fun.’

‘For you perhaps. The rest of you are professional musicians. I’m—’

At this I’m lost. I don’t know what I am. I’m a composer with a single, unfinished symphony. We reach the far end of the strand. Disjointed snatches of Vivaldi curl around to reach us.

‘I don’t want to make an utter fool of myself,’ I say eventually.

‘You won’t do that,’ she says with a smile. ‘Let’s walk a while first. It’s hopeless trying to learn something when you’re tense.’

To hell with Marcus and his ridiculous game, I decide. ‘Never mind walking. Let’s swim.’

Sal raises an eyebrow. ‘It’s gonna be really cold.’

I shrug. ‘Well, if you’re chicken . . .’

She laughs and punches my arm with surprising force. ‘Never.’

I strip off with considerable eagerness before Sal can change her mind. Naked except for my shorts, I hurry down to the water’s edge and turn to watch her with frank interest. She blushes under my scrutiny, but I don’t look away. She’s thin but strong and lovely like the slender stem of a young hazel. I can see the sharp ridge of her hipbones beneath her skin, and yet as shyly she turns away from me, I can’t help noticing that her bottom is nicely rounded. She races down to the sea and crashes into the water, leaping into the waves belly down with a tremendous splash, and gives out a great scream.

‘It’s freezing!’

‘Well, it is the North Sea,’ I say, smug in the safety of the shallows except that my feet are slowly growing numb.

She paddles closer, grabs me round the waist and, hauling me off balance, with strong arms drags me deeper into the waves. I cough and choke, winded by the sheer cold. I’m plunged into ice and my skin burns. I cry out as I surface to find Sal treading water and laughing at me.

‘Told you it was bloody cold.’

‘Bloody goddamned cold,’ I say, between chattering teeth.

Her blonde hair has turned dark and sticks smoothly to her scalp, giving her an instant shorn crop. She looks like an awfully pretty, snub-nosed boy. I swim over to her, pull her close and, fumbling, attempt to kiss her. I’m out of my depth in every sense. Our teeth clink. Spluttering, she pushes me away but I grip her more tightly and try again. For a second she lies passive and lets me kiss her, inexpertly prodding her mouth with my tongue. She ducks down and wriggles out of my grasp, bobbing up a few feet away, appraising me.

‘You’re not very good,’ she says, pleasantly. ‘Honestly, I thought you’d be better.’

I don’t know what to say to this. Feeling pretty ghastly, I start to swim back to shore.

‘Don’t go,’ calls Sal.

I ignore her and clamber out, shivering. The sun isn’t strong enough to warm me and I rub uselessly at my arms. She’s nothing but a tease, I tell myself. A nasty little tease – always Jack’s worst insult. At the thought of my brother, my humiliation deepens. No girl has ever criticised Jack’s amorous abilities, I’m sure.

‘Oh, don’t be sore,’ says Sal. ‘You just need some practice.’

‘Well, unless you’re going to oblige,’ I snap, still cross.

‘Oh, well. I suppose I could,’ she says, her head on one side, watching me with steady brown eyes.

I pause, tempted and intrigued but still affronted.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Sal. ‘I was surprised is all. You seem like you’ve had lots of girls.’

‘I do?’

My vanity marginally appeased, I soften and turn back to her. She’s trembling in the shallows, clearly frozen. Sand sticks to her legs and is plastered in her hair, which is poking up in tufts around her face like feathers. She looks ridiculous and I feel marginally less inadequate. I step back towards her, drape my sweater around her shoulders and pull her close, clumsily trying to warm her.

‘Yes, you look like you’ve been with dozens of girls,’ she says dryly.

‘Hundreds, more like,’ I say.

‘Here,’ she says, pulling me down onto the wet sand to lie beside her.

I’m terribly cold and I want to dress and get warm more than I want to kiss her again, but I know this is feeble. She places a cool, damp hand behind my neck and draws me towards her. I let Sal kiss me and for a moment I wonder how many men she must have kissed to be this accomplished and then I don’t think at all.

—

She spends the afternoon resisting all my attempts to make love to her, pushing me away gently but firmly, whispering, ‘Later,’ both a promise and a reprimand. I have no sense of the timescale of ‘later’. Later tonight? Next year? Never? She has succeeded, however, in alleviating my concerns about singing tenor in the Vivaldi. I’m utterly preoccupied by persuading Sal to turn ‘later’ into ‘sooner’ or ‘right now’ and the Vivaldi is a mere inconvenience. I’ve never felt like this before about music. Usually it is the trivial inconveniences of life that get in the way of music.

Sal sits in the sand, wearing her thick fisherman’s sweater, white knickers and nothing else. Her brassiere is draped over the marram grass to dry. She peers at me primly over her copy of the Vivaldi score and attempts a different course of instruction. I know that she’s naked under that awful sweater and I can’t concentrate at all on her recommendations about where to breathe.

‘You’re hopeless,’ she declares, exasperated.

‘I’m afraid so,’ I say and, catching her, kiss her again, sliding my hand beneath her sweater to touch her small, cold breasts. To my delight, she doesn’t remove my hand immediately but allows me to fumble, inexpertly yet with enthusiasm.

‘But a decent student in other things,’ she says, flushing and shoving me away, with some determination.

‘Only decent?’

‘Promising.’

‘Bloody hell, that’s worse.’ I lunge for her again but she shifts away, placing the wretched score between us.

‘Now, Fox. The “Largo”.’

‘Oh God,’ I say, lying back in the sand and closing my eyes. I have a towering erection. I curse Marcus.

I sing the damn piece through to placate her. It’s pretty ropy, but I’m no opera singer.

‘I suppose that’ll have to do,’ she says, not satisfied.

‘I suppose it will,’ I say. ‘I told you. I’m not a real singer. And, anyway, how come you know so much about choral technique? I thought you only sang show tunes.’

‘One day you’ll have to stop being such an awful snob about popular music.’

I shrug. I don’t really see why I should, and all the other musicians here – especially Marcus – are as entrenched as I. Sal traces the lines on my palm, which tickles like hell, but it seems churlish to ask her to stop.

‘I trained to be an opera singer,’ she says. ‘But I’m not really built for it. My chest is too small, so it doesn’t have the resonance.’

I register that she’s confiding some great disappointment, but I can’t help staring at her small bust. She notices my gaze and swats me.

‘My ribcage, you horrid thing,’ she says, and swats me again.

‘Opera’s loss,’ I say.

I glance at her, bright yellow hair drying in the sun, long, thin legs brushed with sand. Freckles like biscuit crumbs are starting to emerge on her nose. She looks perfectly charming, the prettiest I’ve ever seen her.

‘I’m afraid I can’t really see you as one of Wagner’s Valkyries.’

‘No,’ she agrees quietly. Although I’m only ribbing her, I’ve touched upon real sadness. She looks lost and gazes out to the horizon where grey swirls of cloud are gathering. The tide is coming in, swallowing the beach in greedy gulps, the water licking doglike at our toes.

‘I wish you’d write something for me like you did for Edie.’

Her name flutters between us in the sunlight like a butterfly.

‘I’m not writing much at present,’ I say eventually, my voice cheery and false, like that of a stranger. ‘Shall we go back to the others? See how they’re getting on?’

Sal stares at me for a moment and then starts to pull on her clothes.

We build a bonfire on the beach, dragging fallen branches from the oak woods. Amongst the trees the air is cool and moist; the filtered sunlight, dappled and green, paints our faces. Even the trunks are smothered in lichen. Back home the woodland floor is a palette of colours, a blend of brown and yellow leaf litter, but here even the ground is carpeted in plush emerald moss, so dense that we seem to spring from foot to foot as we pad amongst the trunks. The young leaves of the ash are ribbed like the tender belly of a water snake. In fact I feel almost as though I’m strolling along the bottom of a seabed, which I suppose I am – albeit one that existed a hundred million years ago.

At this thought, I’m pierced with a pang of homesickness. Walking on Hartgrove Hill as boys, we’d race out to scour the chalk for ammonites after the rain had prised them loose. These hard, round objects like cricket balls, imprinted with long-dead sea creatures, seemed like messages from another time when our hill had been submerged beneath the deep, dark ocean.

‘Here, Fox, give me a hand with this,’ calls Marcus and I run to help him with a large branch, glad of the distraction. I mustn’t think about home.

We haul it along the ground, grunting with the effort, and emerge from the wood with some relief. It’s cooler now but bright with an evening glow that will not fade for hours. We’re far enough north that the days stretch on and on, each one seeming to last twice as long as smog-filled ones in London. The light ignites the top of the stone hills overlooking the beach and illuminates the distant small isles across the water.

The tower of wood on the beach has reached several feet. I drop my end of the branch.

‘Come on, Fox, no slacking,’ grumbles Marcus.

‘No. Leave it for now. We need to start the fire small and slow. Too much, too soon, and it won’t light properly.’

Marcus chuckles. ‘I forget that you’re a country boy.’

I smile, gratified. ‘Here, does anyone have a match?’

Sal passes me one and I crouch, lighting the fire, which blooms in an instant. Sal’s changed into a skirt, her fisherman’s sweater tugged low over the waistband, but her feet are still bare. She slides up behind me and slips her skinny arms around my waist. I can feel the others watching us surreptitiously, their conversations suddenly growing louder as they pretend not to notice. I preen in the imagined envy of the other chaps. We stand, wrapped in one another, and watch the flames catch, first in the dry leaves and moss and then in the wood, which starts to burn with a hungry snap. I toss on a driftwood log and it blazes blue. It’s still light but all the heat has gone from the day, and the low sun lingers above the horizon, as if reluctant to leave.

‘Come,’ says Marcus, clicking his fingers.

Reluctantly, Sal and I break apart and follow the musicians who’ve dragged the sofa and chairs nearer to the bonfire. I notice that the woodwind, like spaniels, have claimed the spot closest to the blaze. They look supine and ready to nap. The cellist perches uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa, his cello’s pointed stand sinking into the sand like a high-heeled shoe. He swears loudly and complains vociferously to Marcus about the damp spoiling the woodwork.

Marcus takes no notice. He’s built himself a podium out of wet sand at the furthest point from the fire. The violins flock around his feet, gazing up at him with something close to adoration. His hair has grown in the weeks we’ve been here and, uncombed and straggling, in the light from the flames it gleams wild and red, making him appear at once like Moses and the burning bush. I’m torn between wanting to laugh – the notion of a performance of Vivaldi cobbled together on a beach is ludicrous – and finding myself being drawn in, seduced by Marcus’s seriousness. He stands on his makeshift podium with his eyes closed, baton at his side, and bows at the sea as if it were a vast, unseen audience. He motions to Sal and me. She takes my hand, leading me to a pair of hard, upright chairs to the side of the musicians. The tide has begun to retreat, leaving a wide ribbon of smooth sand, pristine white and gleaming in the fading light. I feel dusk fall, the shift between day and night.

Marcus raises his baton and the orchestra starts to play the first movement from Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor. And to my wonderment they are an orchestra, not a ragtag assortment of odd musicians, but parts of a whole, the rowers in a single boat, Marcus the coxswain effortlessly piloting them through. I’ve heard the piece a hundred times on the gramophone at Hartgrove Hall and once or twice in concert by orchestras grander and more illustrious than this motley crew, but I know that I’ll never hear it like this, with the wind rushing through the marram grass, and the grind of the tide pushing against the sand. Sal squeezes my fingers and I experience a rush of blood and warmth in my chest. Music feels much like love.

It’s Sal’s turn to sing. The oboist stands and calls out the ‘Domine Deus’ from the Gloria, melancholy as the cry of a greylag goose. It flies across the water and, as Marcus nods to Sal, she echoes it, her small, sweet voice wrapping in and under the note of the oboe. Beneath them, the strings tiptoe up and down. Sal’s voice is girlish and pretty, and it lacks power. But somehow Marcus forces her to find a depth and sadness I’ve not heard before. She’ll never sing this solo before a real audience or in a concert hall, and that unhappiness and discontent seep into the melody, infusing it with melancholy. Sal sings of her disappointment at not being a great singer, and somehow becomes a better one.

Then it’s my turn. To my amazement, Marcus coaxes a passable performance even from me. I decide to trust him and lean back into the music, to find that he catches me and leads me through, deft and sure. I listen to my own voice pouring out into the gathering dark. Marcus is a magician. For a night he can turn fragile warblers into singers. I want to hear what he can do with a full symphony orchestra. I curse myself for dropping my ticket on the floor of the gents. We finish, the notes slowly decay, and we all sit and listen to the sudden hush. The slap of the waves on the shore. The spit and hiss of damp wood on the fire.

We wait instinctively for the applause that does not come but we hear it anyway in the rhythmic boom of the surf. It’s dark now and late. A paring of moon glints, casting a corridor of light upon the black water. I look at Marcus and can see even in the darkness that he’s drenched in sweat, as though he’s been running for miles and miles at full tilt.

‘Let’s swim!’ he calls, his voice giddy and loud.

‘No fear,’ I say to Sal. ‘Too bloody cold.’

‘Don’t tell them that,’ she whispers back with a giggle.

Taking my hand in hers, she leads me away from the others and up the beach, past the dunes and back towards the oak woods. We hesitate on the boundary between the strand and the trees. The night woods are so dark that something primitive and instinctive buried inside us makes us pause, uneasy. It’s the frisson of strangeness that I feel at the top of Ringmoor at dusk, the sense of shadows, the echo of ancient footsteps, and at last something nameless and older still that watches us from the blackness. I take the first step, and tug Sal behind me across the threshold. She cries out in pain.

‘Ouch, my foot.’

I glance down. She’s still not wearing shoes. Concealed in the cushions of moss are roots and stones and pine needles. I pick her up and, panting with effort, carry her, laughing, into the thicket. She’s heavier than I expect, but she wraps her arms around my neck and I can smell the sandy, heather scent of her skin. I sense my advantage. For the first time today, I don’t feel inept. Sweating now, I bear her deeper into the wood. The trees become less dense; beeches and moss give way to bluebells and wild garlic. Their fragrance is stronger at night, so potent that I can taste it at the back of my throat. As my steps crush the flowers, they release still more perfume, thick as smoke. The white blooms of garlic are stars littering the woodland floor.

The smell of the place confounds me. It’s the very essence of Hartgrove copse in spring – but here the bluebells are mixed with something else, peat and salt carried in from the sea. I hear the creak of the trees like old bones and the distant wash of the tide. I set Sal down and she tries to walk but falters, the rough ground hurting her feet. She’s pinned. I smile and kiss her.

‘Come sit,’ I say between kisses, trying to tug her down beside me.

She flutters, undecided.

‘Come on.’

She allows herself to be drawn to lie beside me. We’re both dishevelled. My shirt is filthy and I’ve lost a button. I slide my hand up her thigh and beneath her skirt. She trembles, I hope in anticipation. The stink of garlic is too much, sickly and overwhelming. The ground is moist. I flick away something with a multitude of legs scurrying across my cheek. This time Sal lets me roll up her jumper and with clumsy and too-eager fingers I find her nipples, hard as beads. I want her but I’m also filled with profound relief that I’m no longer going to be a virgin. I think of Edie but only for a moment and only from habit. I’ve thought of doing this with Edie a thousand times but it’s a picture from a book, static and unyielding, and Sal’s breast is soft and warm under my fingers. It starts to rain but we do not stop.

Marcus sends the others home. Only Sal, Marcus and I remain for the summer. We’re a comfortable threesome. Sal cooks and sings and sleeps with me at night. And sometimes in the afternoons when Marcus goes for a walk – we suspect for the very purpose of allowing us time alone. Music and sex. Even as they pass, I know that these are halcyon days.

Mrs Partick informs us with some delight that we’ve been labelled ‘the fornicators’ and that our souls are prayed for every Sabbath – whether for our rehabilitation or our eternal condemnation, she declines to say. She lingers in the garden with us after she’s finished cleaning, smoking her pipe and, to my great delight, singing bawdy songs in Old Scots. I can’t understand the half of them but I can tell they’re lewd by her cackles and winks. One evening she conjures a bottle of thirty-year-old Macallan, and we all sit outside amongst the heather, drinking and listening to her sing. She leans close to me, confiding her song like a filthy joke, her breath like shortbread.

I’ve had no news of Hartgrove since I left; I daren’t hope that George and Jack have managed to extend the stay of execution. I still can’t bring myself to write and I won’t ask Sal to enquire on my behalf. Each week I scour the copies of The Times and the Telegraph, which Marcus has sent up and which arrive a full fortnight out of date, brimming with old reports. Here and there is a mention of an ancient house that has been felled like a diseased tree. I read with dread but either Hartgrove Hall is safe or it is insufficiently grand to merit a mention. The loss of the place might be a blow to us but not to the nation. It would not signal the end of a great dynasty, only of a family. In my mind, the piece I’m trying to write becomes both an elegy – the Hall’s destruction seems inevitable – and an apology. I should not have left as I did. My running away seems childish, my subsequent silence cowardly.

One morning the boat arrives and along with the newspapers and post for Marcus and Sal is a package for me. I’m bewildered as no one knows that I’m here. At breakfast while we pick kipper bones from our teeth I unwrap the parcel. Inside is the Not-Constable painting of Hartgrove barrow. I stare at the murky colours and sniff the canvas, conscious of the familiar smell. I shake the wrappings but there’s no message to say who’s sent it. I suppose it must be either Edie or George. To my shame, I hope it’s Edie. I turn to Sal, who’s studying the picture with curiosity.

‘It isn’t very good, is it?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I agree. ‘But I’m fond of it anyway.’ I retrieve another kipper bone. ‘Did you tell someone I’m here?’

Sal shrugs, glances away. ‘Only Edie.’

‘Did you ask her about the house too?’

‘No. I only dropped her a line to tell her that you were here. I didn’t want them all to worry. You ought to have done it yourself. Don’t be cross I told her.’

I smile, taking her hand. ‘I’m not,’ I say, discovering that it’s true. It must have been Edie who sent the painting. I drift through the morning, cheerful.

I prop the Not-Constable upon my makeshift desk and gaze at the view from Hartgrove barrow. I pinch one of Mrs Partick’s melodies for my composition and for the first time in months I write. I don’t know whether it’s the proximity of the view of Hartgrove, Mrs Partick’s tune or the emancipating effect of regular sex with Sal that finally liberates me from my block.

Marcus studies his scores while I write, and I turn my pages over to him so that he can dispense voluminous criticism. He’s relentless, uncomplimentary and, I remonstrate, needlessly cruel. We shout. He mocks and laughs and tells me that if I know so much then I should simply leave. Go back to Hartgrove Hall. And yet, I stay. I know that he’s making me a better composer, and somehow I understand that I can’t leave until the piece is finished. I can’t return without it even though George and Jack will be united in their indifference. They’d much rather I came back with a tractor or fifty pounds or a cow – not a perfectly useless piece of music. But I have to finish nonetheless. I try not to consider what Edie will think of it. I try not to think of her at all.

‘No,’ says Marcus, drinking coffee and flicking cigarette ash onto the already criss-crossed page of my manuscript. ‘You play the piano, don’t you?’

‘A bit,’ I say.

‘Well, either you’re the most brilliant virtuoso or an idiot. I don’t know anyone who could play this. Do you?’

‘I don’t know many piano players. Not great ones,’ I say, wounded.

‘Well, there aren’t any I know who could play this piffle,’ says Marcus. ‘Albert Shields might. But even he’d struggle.’

He’s crumpling the pages in his zeal and I resist the impulse to snatch them back.

He frowns and studies the manuscript again.

‘It might work for two pianos. Could you tease out two parts? Make sure they work in counterpoint or it’s pointless.’

I spend days puzzling and show my efforts with some satisfaction to Marcus who grunts and dismisses them.

‘No. Doesn’t work at all. You’re not hearing the instruments distinctly enough. You have an ear for melody, that’s clear. But you don’t understand what each instrument can do, and equally what it can’t do. You need to compose within its range. That way you show off an instrument to its best advantage. You’re like the director of photography of a film whose job it is to make Greta Garbo look absolutely cracking.’

He has a gramophone brought over on the little fishing boat and we sit around each evening, listening to records again and again, different orchestras and a cornucopia of conductors performing the same piece, Marcus pointing out the subtle variations. Slowly, painfully, I learn to listen better and then to hear better as I write.

Marcus allows me to study the scores with him. He’s accepted a position as conductor for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. I’m frankly baffled that he chose it over the New York Phil.

‘Ah,’ says Marcus. ‘You read that piece in The Times? Where I said that I hadn’t yet accepted the New York Phil?’

‘Yes, that was the one.’

Marcus chuckles. ‘“I haven’t yet accepted” as they never actually offered.’

‘I can’t believe it. I’m sure I read it several times—’

‘There were lots of rumours, most of them started by me,’ says Marcus happily. ‘If I suggest myself enough, they’ll realise what a jolly good idea I am. But until they do, I’m going to play nicely with the BSO. They’re pretty damn good. I can make them better.’

I agree without hesitation. I’m quite certain he can.

‘Hello, now I’ve an idea. How about me taking you on as my assistant? I won’t be able to pay you terribly much, but it would be useful for you.’ His tone is casual, but something about the way that he won’t meet my eye makes me wonder whether he’s been rehearsing this for a while.

‘Bournemouth’s a little close to home,’ I say, reluctant.

I can’t see them yet. Not until the piece is finished. Jack or George or the General are all highly unlikely to turn up to a concert. Edie, however, might.

‘We’ll be on tour for most of the first year,’ says Marcus. ‘It’ll do you good to see a bit more of the world. And while you’re at it, you can learn to orchestrate properly. No more of that muddy, thick sound you’re currently so enamoured by.’

I glare at him. It’s typical of Marcus to offer a gift with one hand and an insult with the other. He beams at me, quite oblivious.

‘What about Sal?’ I ask, not because I actually feel guilty but because I should.

He shrugs. ‘Oh, bring her along. I’m sure we can find room for her somewhere.’

He glances at me shrewdly and then carefully stares out of the window to watch a flock of greylag geese wheeling above the dunes, honking gloriously.

‘Are you in love with her, old chap?’

‘I suppose so,’ I say.