October 2003

I found the loneliness piercing. I’d begun to find a rhythm after Edie; altered, of course, but I’d started to believe in the possibility of pleasures here and there. After Marcus, I lost my footing again. Sleep eluded me. Frightened that the silence might return, I forced myself to write a little in the afternoons, but everything I produced seemed inadequate and thin.

One Saturday morning, I read a grisly review of a new piece I’d been writing in the Telegraph. It had been performed at the Cheltenham Music Festival but I’d had a horrid cold and been unable to conduct, so John had stepped in at the last minute. I had never liked his style, but I’d been in quite a pinch. Uncharitably, I considered how much of the critic’s rudeness could be put down to John’s interpretation. Mostly the critic seemed put out that someone old had dared attempt something new. John telephoned to apologise. I wouldn’t hear of it.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it wasn’t your fault. He simply didn’t like the piece. That’s all there is to it.’

There was a pause. Then I heard John sigh. ‘It’s the first time I’ve had to find a lousy review on my own. Usually Marcus has faxed the damned thing over to me before I’ve even woken up. You’d think I’d be glad but I’m not. I miss the old bugger.’

‘It’s the miserable thing about getting to our age. One starts to outlive one’s friends. It’s a lonely business.’

After he’d rung off, I reread the review and, thoroughly depressed, asked myself whether, as well as outliving my friends, I’d outlived my era.

Ten minutes later Robin sprang into the music room, while I was still bathing in self-pity.

‘Hello, Grandpa!’ he said and came to sit beside me at the piano, where I was reviewing a concerto I’d been attempting. He’d shot up in the past few months, and to his utter delight could now reach the pedals.

‘Can I give it a go?’ he said, glancing through the pages.

‘Perhaps later. I’m too cross to think at the moment.’

‘Ah. Are you growing too? I get cross when I grow, Mum says.’

‘I’m certainly not growing. Shrinking perhaps.’

‘Shrinking? Poor you. No wonder you’re cross. Well, if you can’t reach the pedals any more, I can do them for you, like you used to for me when I was little.’

I laughed despite myself. He’d managed them alone for a mere matter of weeks.

‘I’ll bear it in mind, Robin.’

I surrendered my chair to him and listened for nearly two hours while he practised without pausing for so much as a pee or a glass of water.

‘You’re really coming on, darling.’

‘I played in school assembly on Monday.’

‘So I heard. Did it go well? They can’t have known what had hit ’em.’

I’d finally agreed with Clara that it would be a good thing for Robin to perform in front of his school. All the children learning musical instruments did so, apparently, and, according to Clara, the fact that Robin did not was odd. She also insisted that if the children could hear Robin, they’d understand why he was sometimes a little different – why he always chose piano practice over football or cricket. Perhaps she was right, but privately I suspected that a primary-school assembly was a very good place for him to play – the audience would not distinguish in its enthusiasm between a rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ wheezed out on a recorder or a distinctive interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat major.

‘Well, what did they make of it then?’

‘I was fantastic,’ he said, with the straightforwardness of the young. ‘I was told by Mrs Morgan to play for only ten minutes because the little ones in Reception and Year One couldn’t manage any more, but at the end of the first movement they clapped so hard that I played the second. And then I did the third even though she was waving at me to stop. I closed my eyes and pretended I couldn’t see her.’

‘Did they like those too?’

‘Oh yes. I played for over half an hour. Everyone was really late for first lesson.’

‘And even the little ones sat still?’

‘Yes. But when they went out, there was a puddle because Mark Stanton in Year One had done a wee on the floor.’

‘Oh dear. That’s a shame.’

‘Not really. He told me at break that he didn’t want to miss anything. That’s why he didn’t go to the loo even though he couldn’t hold it in. I thought it was a really nice compliment, actually.’

‘Yes, you’re quite right. I don’t think my music has ever made anyone pee on the floor.’

Robin grinned. Clearly I’d underestimated the discernment of young children: they were perfectly capable of recognising extraordinary talent.

After orange juice and chocolate cake in the kitchen, Robin turned to me. ‘Please can I try your new tune now? I’ve not been the first to play anything for ages.’

In hindsight, I ought simply to have refused. I knew the piece wasn’t ready and I was in quite the wrong frame of mind. We returned to the music room, and I gave him the first few pages. I was surprised at how well they sounded. It was astonishing how the boy could sense what I was trying to say and tease out the intention, making it elegant and lyrical. He overheard my thoughts, even as I had them.

‘It’s not at all bad! Much better than I thought. You’re an absolute marvel,’ I said, and Robin’s ears pinked with pleasure as he continued to play.

And then, inevitably, it went wrong. Our ideas diverged and it was no longer the piece I’d imagined but something else.

‘No. Stop. You’re not hearing it. Try again.’

He faltered and then had another go. It was worse. It didn’t sound anything like what I’d envisaged.

‘Stop. No. Again.’

He tried once more, but this time I stopped him after only a few bars.

‘It’s all off. Why can’t you hear it? Is there something wrong?’

‘You’re shouting, Grandpa.’

‘I’m sorry, Robin.’

I tried to control my rising sense of panic. If Robin couldn’t hear it, then no one could and I’d be alone.

‘Try again. Go from the top. The first bit was wonderful.’

Only this time it wasn’t. He played it differently and it was quite wrong. Not how I’d heard it at all.

‘No! For Christ’s sake, Marcus, just stop,’ I said, slamming the piano lid down.

Robin snapped back his fingers just in time and turned to look at me, his mottled face now streaming with tears. ‘I’m not Marcus. I’m Robin.’

I was instantly filled with remorse. ‘Oh darling, I’m sorry. It isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I’m not myself.’

I tried to hug him, but Robin pushed me away. ‘I think I’d like to go home now,’ he said with trembling dignity. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t play it how you heard it in your head. I played it how I heard it in mine.’

‘Of course you did. I’m so sorry.’

I telephoned Clara who came straight away. Shamefaced, I told her what had happened, while Robin stayed close to her, staring at me in wounded puzzlement.

She sighed. ‘Hasn’t he got enough to cope with at the moment, Papa? I know you’re feeling pretty wretched, but you have to try. You’re supposed to be the grown-up.’

‘You’re quite right,’ I replied, feeling rotten. ‘I’m sorry, Robin,’ I said for the umpteenth time. ‘I’m not myself just now.’

I offered him my hand, and he hesitated for a moment before shaking it.

After they’d left, I went to lie down but I could not sleep. I listened to the wind rustle through the beeches and breathed in the sickly scent of the last honeysuckle. I heard the sound of the doorbell, shrill and insistent. I ignored it but it rang a second time and then a third. Thoroughly put out, I hastened downstairs to find a young woman on the doorstep.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Fox-Talbot, you did say three o’clock, didn’t you?’

‘Three o’clock for what exactly?’

Had I forgotten the chiropodist again?

‘I’m Emma Livingstone from The Times. We were going to talk about the Marcus Albright memorial concert?’

‘Oh, yes. So we were.’

She stared at me, glancing down at my feet in their socks, part inconvenienced journalist and part social services concern. ‘We can reschedule if you like but it might end up being too late to run the interview before the concert.’

‘No. No. Mustn’t risk that. Come on in.’

A little later, we were safely ensconced in the music room, a tape recorder and two cups of tea between us. She looked to me to be about Clara’s age. She wore black-rimmed spectacles, her dark hair was threaded with grey and she had that tired, smudged look of women in their forties with small children. I noticed a little trail of jam on her T-shirt. Her linen trousers had not been ironed. I supposed most women didn’t bother with such things nowadays.

‘So, you met in the 1950s?’

‘I’m so terribly sorry. I met whom?’

Still agitated after the upset with Robin, I realised with some alarm that I was finding it difficult to concentrate on the young woman’s questions.

‘Did you meet Marcus Albright in the 1950s?’

‘No, it would have been earlier than that. Forty-eight or forty-nine.’

‘You often describe him as your collaborator, which intrigues me because, famously, you never let him conduct your work.’

‘I did once. Terrible mistake. Sounded bloody awful. But he was my first listener. After Edie, that is. Edie, my wife. She was like my own ears. I didn’t know what I thought about something until Edie told me. Now with them both gone, I feel rather as if I’m going deaf. I’m unsure half the time whether what I’m hearing is any good or not.’

I glanced down at the tape recorder. ‘Leave that bit out, would you? Makes me sound a bit doolally.’

‘I don’t think it does. It makes you sound like a man who’s lost people he loved.’

‘Now I sound pathetic. An emotional squeeze-box. I’ve always loathed the accordion.’

She stared at me. ‘I’ll leave it out.’ She scribbled something in her notebook.

I fidgeted. The business with Robin was itching away at me like a nasty woollen vest. Although I wanted to call Clara and find out whether he was all right, I supposed I ought to leave them in peace for a while.

‘And you and Marcus were very close.’

‘Yes, we were. For more than fifty years.’

To my utter shame and horror, I had the dreadful feeling that I was about to cry. At that moment I could think of no indignity worse than sitting in an interview with a jam-speckled woman from The Times and sobbing. Perhaps that’s why I found myself blurting out, ‘Marcus was family essentially. He was my brother George’s lover on and off for many years.’

I took momentary glee in the look of sheer surprise on her face, then felt a twinge of anxiety about how thoroughly inappropriate this admission was. On the plus side, I no longer felt in the least like bawling.

‘I’m afraid you can’t possibly print that,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

She removed her spectacles and gave a tiny, schoolmistressy sigh. ‘Fine. But you do realise that you’re waving candy bars under my nose and then telling me that I can’t eat them?’

‘Oh dear. But it’s quite out of the question. Marcus wouldn’t have minded in the least – indeed, I was always begging him for more discretion over his affairs, but George was a very private person. I miss George. He was a good egg.’

‘He was your middle brother?’

‘Yes. And terribly attractive, according to Marcus. He always complained that George had a hard time of it. Said people noticed me and, of course, Jack. Everyone noticed Jack. But old George got rather left out of things.’

George who never reproached me or Edie about what we had done, who’d simply sat and listened when we told him. He did not blame us even when it transpired that Jack had left without saying goodbye to him. I’d thought that was callous; after all, George, good old George, was not to blame but then, I’d supposed, I could hardly complain about my brother disappearing and cutting off contact. He had far better reason than I had ever had. Latterly I had begun to view it as an act of kindness. Perhaps George would have tried to go with him to God knows where and Jack had known that would never do. George needed Hartgrove. He could not leave the Hall and be happy.

George missed Jack dreadfully. George’s loss was pure while mine was edged with relief. No longer having to face Jack, I did not have to face my guilt daily. I could pack it neatly away and try not to think of it in the quiet and the dark. Jack’s absence was soon filled with Clara, who wriggled into the void he had created, noisy and vital, until soon we didn’t notice any hole at all.

The General took Jack’s absence at first as a joke, some farcical, bed-swapping fun.

‘Well, there’s no need for you two to marry, is there? She already has your last name.’

He’d started to call Edie ‘Bathsheba’ until George quietly, tactfully, put a stop to it. Later, in his dotage, when the General persistently called me Jack, I thought that this was probably his way of telling me that he did not forgive me.

The journalist leaned forward and adjusted her tape recorder. I wondered uneasily how much I had said aloud.

‘Who was Jack, Mr Fox-Talbot?’

‘My eldest brother.’

‘Is he still alive?’

‘We’re not in touch.’

The queasy feeling returned. A yellow haze clouded my vision, and once again I was close to tears. This really would not do.

‘Are you all right, Mr Fox-Talbot? We can always do this another time.’

‘No. No. I’m perfectly fine. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to fetch me a glass of water from the kitchen? I think I’ve had rather too much sun today.’

The woman glanced over to the window. The drizzle had settled into heavy rain. Still, she did not contradict me and trotted off to the kitchen while I furiously attempted to gather myself. I riffled through the CDs in their rack, trying to find something rousing to distract me. Every bloody one seemed to be conducted by sodding Marcus. He grinned at me from the covers, smugly gratified by my distress.

The next CD was one of Edie’s. I’d conducted the Bournemouth Symphony as she sang the soprano solo for one of my arrangements of Dorset folk songs. It had not been a hit. No one else liked it much when Edie dared to sing anything other than her usual wartime drivel. I’d loved this record – I’d not been able to bear listening to it since she’d died. It was odd: I could come face to face with photographs of her and revel in a masochistic nostalgia, but I could not listen to her recordings. Even after several years the sound of her voice was too much.

‘Your water, Mr Fox-Talbot.’

‘Thank you, you’re most kind.’

As I took it from her, I discovered that I was still holding Edie’s CD. Her photograph mimed a song at me, her mouth open like a bird’s.

After the lady journalist left, I retreated into the garden. Usually I avoided interviews, and while I’d wanted to promote Marcus’s concert, I had an unpleasant feeling that I’d given away far too much of myself without saying anything useful about Marcus or the music. I surveyed the flower beds. The last of the Michaelmas daisies were black from frost, and the foliage was all dying back, leaving expanses of bare brown earth. Ours had always been a summer garden.

I was worried about Robin. Knowing I’d upset him felt ghastly, and I was filled with shame. I’d relied too much on the boy. He’d given me a ball of string to help me find my way out of grief’s labyrinth. Now after Marcus I’d propped myself up on him once again. He wasn’t quite eight years old. Dizzy, I sat down on a rain-dashed bench, soaking my trousers. I hoped he’d forgive me. Children were more tolerant and more merciful than adults, weren’t they? If not, I’d buy him a box of chocolates and a piano. That ought to do it.

I heard his voice ringing across the empty garden: I’m sorry I didn’t play it how you heard it in your head. I played it how I heard it in mine. He was no longer a musical savant playing by instinct. He now wanted to interpret for himself. He was no cipher but an independent artist. I felt a belly-punch of nostalgia for the baby musician he’d been – happy simply to listen to what my music told him. I supposed that this was how mothers must feel when their dimple-kneed toddlers metamorphose into skinny schoolboys. I felt horribly unnecessary to him. The charms of the old Steinway and cake with Grandpa would ebb, and one day he wouldn’t want to come and visit at all. I would be a duty, not a necessary pleasure. I registered with some disquiet that, for me, Robin had become inadvertently and dangerously essential.

Tired and out of sorts, I was unable to resist the melancholy ruminations I usually told myself sternly to avoid. I’d lost a good many people over the years. It made me sound very careless. But it happened at my age. One missed them all. The Christmas card list became shorter and shorter. Each year one crossed off another few names. Saved a fortune on stamps.

It began to drizzle and I returned to the house. I headed for the music room, but then I veered into Edie’s study instead. I’d still not emptied it. Mrs Stroud had finally tidied away Edie’s things into the desk but the room itself remained untouched. The pink damask wallpaper. The pretty writing desk and the hopeless kitchen chair she used instead of a proper desk chair. The photographs of the children were spread out in a ring around the blotter. Clara on her wedding day – all white gauze and smiles; Lucy at graduation, looking tense and with an unflattering haircut. The grandchildren were pictured as they had been before Edie died: Annabel and Katy in matching polka-dot, little-girl dresses; Robin a serious-faced infant, wielding a rattle like a club.

The room no longer contained the sense that Edie had just walked out for a moment, soon to return. It was a museum. The memories had been mothballed. I fumbled through her drawers and pulled out a mouldering pack of mints and an ancient packet of cigarettes, half empty. Edie always claimed that she’d stopped – but once in a while, I knew she’d sloped off to the potting shed like some elderly schoolgirl and had a quick fag behind the roses. I could always tell, but she preferred it if I pretended not to. I hadn’t thought about this for yonks, and it shook me. How many other aspects of her had I forgotten? She was vanishing, piece by piece, and I hadn’t even noticed.

Delving deeper into her drawer, I found a copy of the Torah, which I hastily set aside. Any souvenirs from her religious endeavours served only to remind me that this was something we had not shared. It annoyed me, this defiance not only of logic but of us – she and her chum Jehovah wilfully excluding me.

I yanked open the drawer with more force than was necessary and succeeded in spilling the contents all over the carpet. Swearing, I lowered myself painfully onto my knees and started to dump back into the drawer biros, paper clips, packets of tissues, letters and old Christmas cards. An elegant and familiar script caught my eye – I examined the picture on the card. A robin on a beach. A trifle vulgar and at odds with the beautiful handwriting inside, which I recognised even though I hadn’t seen it for many years. It was very similar to my own, only taller, more masculine, more graceful. My dizziness returned. I sat back, wondering how on earth I was going to get up.

My heart crescendoed in my ears, its tempo quickening from a steady adagio to a furious allegrissimo. I was suddenly frightened that I would die right there of a heart attack on the not-terribly-clean carpet and no one would notice for days. Mrs Stroud would discover me as she prodded my corpse with the hoover. A pain bloomed across my chest and in my gut. I forced myself to breathe. I pretended my heartbeat was the pulse of the orchestra, and I its conductor – no instrument dare disobey the maestro. I tapped a slower rhythm in my head, and, sure enough, compliant and meek as a desk of second violins, my own heart obeyed my command of ritardando and slowed to a steadier pace. The pain subsided.

Calmer now, I read the inscription:

‘To Edie, Happy Christmas, love, Jack. The Lotus Club, Longboat Key, December ’98.’

I turned over the card. There was nothing else.

I couldn’t sleep. I sat up in the dark with a glass of whisky, listening to the creak and shudder of the house. Jack had been quite clear: he would not forgive us. And yet there was the Christmas card – did it reveal a softening of his resolve? Or perhaps he had forgiven Edie and not me. For Christ’s sake, why hadn’t she told me he’d sent it? Why, of all things to send her, did he choose a bloody Christmas card? Or were there other cards, a letter even?

I rifled through her desk, taking it apart drawer by drawer, leaving an armada of papers strewn across the rug, but I couldn’t find any others. Had she tossed them out? Hidden them? Or was this the only one? I might never know. Anger flared with the whisky fumes. I’d not been angry with Edie for a long time. It was a queer feeling. Before, when I’d been angry, I’d tell her and we’d have a jolly good row. This anger had nowhere to go and it trickled through me like meltwater.

I’d never attempted to find Jack. He knew where to find us. He’d asked us to leave him alone and it had felt like the very least I could do, considering. Yet the card suggested other possibilities. Perhaps I ought to search for him. Perhaps he’d been waiting for me to do so for years. Bloody Edie. I could always stuff the card back in the drawer and forget about it, but that was silly talk. I knew it was there, and so a decision must be made.

An owl hooted through the stillness and at a distance another answered. I sloshed another finger of whisky into my glass, satisfied to find that I was buoyant with alcohol, bobbing most obligingly upon waves of fifteen-year-old Macallan.

Had Edie ever seen Jack, I wondered. She’d certainly had the opportunity to, during her various concert tours. A lustrous spark of jealousy flared deep inside me, long dormant, suddenly and uselessly rekindled. There was something bracing about it, however futile, like desire for the dead.

I fingered the card, re-examining it for hidden messages. Of course there were none. It was entirely without context. A floating sign, like a stray line of a libretto from a lost opera, and I could not interpret it with any certainty. And yet the card itself gave me cause for hope. I chose to see it as a token of forgiveness. Surely, if Jack could forgive Edie sufficiently to post her a gaudy card of a Florida beach sprinkled with glitter, then perhaps, just perhaps, he might forgive me.

‘A holiday?’ said Clara. ‘You want to take us all on holiday to Florida?’

‘Yes. A week or so in the sun after Christmas. You certainly need a rest after all the nastiness with Ralph. I can play a little golf.’

‘Have you ever played golf?’

‘No. But Florida sounds like the sort of place one starts.’

She stared at me as though I’d finally cracked.

‘Afterwards, I thought we’d take the children on to Disney World.’

‘Aren’t the girls a bit old?’

‘You’re never too old for Disney World. Isn’t that their slogan? And besides, Robin will like it.’

‘It’s very generous of you, Papa, but wouldn’t you prefer Vienna or Prague? Somewhere with music and culture rather than’ – here she paused, as though about to say a particularly dirty word – ‘golf.’

‘Maybe I fancy a change.’

Clara did not look convinced. I did not tell her about Jack’s Christmas card. I wasn’t quite ready to confess to her the whole sorry business. Besides, I hadn’t written to tell Jack that we were coming. He might have moved away. He might refuse to see us. He might be dead.

While Clara was bemused by the idea of the trip, the children were delighted. I’d not travelled for some time and had not been overseas since a year or so before Edie had died – she’d been too unwell to travel and I hadn’t wanted to leave her. Now I found myself anxious about the journey and the prospect of being away from home. I woke in the early hours, fretting about details: suppose I mislaid my passport, or neglected to pack my good non-crease trousers, and what if my bags got lost? This new-found timidity irked and shamed me. I’d conducted concerts all around the world and had taken pride in my speedy, lightweight, last-minute packing – yet for this trip, I started to prepare my suitcase weeks in advance, fussing endlessly over what to take. At least, I consoled myself, Clara would be there to look after any last-minute fumbles.

Then, two weeks before the holiday, Ralph developed shingles and, as a consequence, both girls caught chickenpox two days before we were set to depart. Ralph, in my opinion, was a wretched father, but it turned out that he was a splendid virus spreader. Clara telephoned to cancel the holiday.

‘I’m so sorry, Papa. You’ll get it back through the insurance. We can go another time.’

I was horribly disappointed. I wanted to kick something gratifyingly hard. Of course it would be Ralph who loused it all up. Trust him to fall ill precisely when it was most inconvenient. He seemed intent on spoiling things for Clara. I was thoroughly put out. Then I had a thought.

‘Wait a minute, what if I take Robin? I mean, he had the pox when the girls were away at tennis camp, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, he’s already had it. But I’m not sure, Papa. Wouldn’t it be a bit much for you?’

‘I’ll be all right. I used to travel the world, you know.’

‘Of course you did, but you’ve not been anywhere for a while. And Robin’s not the easiest.’

I was carried along now by the brilliance of my scheme.

‘Yes, but it seems most unfair that he should lose his treat and be condemned to stay at home because his father and sisters are so inconsiderate as to fall ill.’

She laughed and then I detected a note of relief. ‘Well, if you’re quite sure you can manage. It might be easier to look after the girls without Robin trailing after me and complaining that he’s bored.’

Almost as soon as she’d hung up, I did wonder whether I was being a trifle overambitious, but it was too late. Besides, any such admission of doubt would confirm to them all their concerns that I was losing my confidence and that soon I might not be able to cope alone. I was warding off that dreaded confrontation with the girls for as long as possible, steadily ignoring Clara’s sighs and Lucy’s prods of ‘Isn’t the house getting a little big for you, Papa?’ as though it had spontaneously started to grow like rogue ear hairs. No, I would take Robin, and the trip would be a glorious success, and Lucy and Clara would leave me be for a year or two.

The night before we departed, it started to snow. I was too anxious to sleep and lay awake in the dark, watching the first flakes fall, silent and weightless. Then, after a while, seizing my dressing gown, I tottered downstairs and stepped outside onto the terrace. There was barely half an inch, just enough to glaze the hill and lawns. I stared out across the white expanse of garden. Edie would already have been out walking, hacking across the scrub and up to the huddled woods. I half expected to see her footprints.

The clouds parted to reveal a serving of moon, and its light reflected off the fallen snow, making it weirdly bright, as though the landscape were lit from within by a concealed lamp. The woods remained black. No matter what we did to the fields around them, the copse endured – with the knot of trees at its heart where no light or modernity seemed to penetrate. It had survived the slash and burn of two world wars. We told one another that it wasn’t worthwhile felling it and putting the land to grass, as it was too poor even for cattle, but the truth was we loved those woods. The vast oaks and the alders, the tide of bluebells in spring followed by the stink of wild garlic and, most of all, the uncanny sense of eyes watching us. We dared one another to stay alone there after dark, and on one notable occasion my brothers lassoed me to a tree, leaving me screaming. I’d wrenched myself free and raced out onto the hillside, feral with terror. I’d had to wash the acid stench of fear from my skin before venturing downstairs for dinner.

Now, the white gleam of snow only made the woods blacker still. While the old songs receded from the world, dying as the last singers passed away, these woods remained, silent listeners to so many songs, as though they’d absorbed them through their roots and leaves. I imagined that when the wind blew, the music scattered into the air like pollen. In summer Edie had sung there as we walked with Clara and Lucy as children. They’d been reluctant and had to be bribed along with treats. Jack told me once that our mother had often walked there too, and I liked to think that she did so singing.

In the cold I counted all the people I had lost like beads on a string. My mother. Only remembered as a warm shadow, a snatch of forgotten song heard sometimes when I started to drift off to sleep. George. Marcus. Edie. Jack. Here, I hesitated. His loss was different from the others. Jack I might find again.

I called out across the snow, ‘Jack, does it make it better that I spent my life loving her? It was a terrible thing I did and I’ve lived with it for fifty years. Our happiness cost you yours. For that I’m sorry but I can’t regret our life together. That would make the sin worse. You paid the price for our loving one another. I hope you went on to marry again and to have children and grandchildren of your own. I wish that you’d written to me to boast of your good life. Your deserved good life. But perhaps that’s my punishment. Never to know what happened to you. If you are happy, then perhaps I don’t deserve the relief of knowing it.’

No voice answered from the muffled dark. The snow continued to fall.

When I awoke in the morning every last flake had gone, as though it had never fallen at all.

I was grateful not to be travelling alone. I couldn’t lose my nerve in front of the boy. The trip was remarkably straightforward. The airport staff appeared to find the prospect of an old man and his young grandson travelling together as endearing as a box of lop-eared bunny rabbits. As a result we were wafted through to the front of every queue and tended to with benevolent condescension. On the plane Robin watched cartoons and ate sweeties for ten hours – I saw no need to interfere – while I fidgeted beside him and counted which bits of me were aching with cramp.

I found Florida disconcerting. Every day brought the same unsullied sky, crocheted in baby-boy blue. The only rain that fell came from sprinkler hoses to keep the flowers pert and vivid. Wedding-cake tiers of apartments lined the beaches, each angled so as to allow the one behind a precise portion of sunset. Nature had been combed, shampooed and set. Spearmint-green grass grew everywhere, across the neat communal gardens and the ribbons of golf courses, as though it had been purchased on special offer from the same bolt of ghastly fabric. The moon-white sand was devoid of litter. Everyone spoke loudly and with excruciating politeness. I loathed it and found it despicably comfortable, all at once. This was a paradise for the elderly. A cornucopia of sunshine, handrails and extra-large parking spaces. I worried that, if I remained too long, I would never leave.

None of the restaurants offered early-bird specials as they were packed with white-haired diners yelling at one another across the plastic tables from a quarter to six, every restaurant empty by eight. I drove anxiously at twenty-five miles an hour, comfortably overtaking even more decrepit drivers who creaked along at under twenty. When the lights changed, there was always a pause before the first driver succeeded in telling his foot to press the accelerator, but no one ever honked their horn.

I’d rented an apartment on Longboat Key, where I resented the usefulness of the handrail in the bathroom and the non-slip matting on the floor of the shower. The instructions for the air conditioner were all in large print. The only convenience the apartment lacked was a piano, but Clara had warned Robin and, suitably prepared, he managed with great fortitude. We spent two days beside the pool, Robin swimming and me mostly napping, or at least pretending to.

I took him to a concert where, during the Moonlight Sonata, we counted fifty-three audience members asleep. I understood why the conductor pushed the brass section a little heavily.

I wanted to recover my equilibrium before we went knocking on Jack’s door. I worried that my appearing with Robin out of the blue would be quite a shock, but on the other hand if I had warned Jack we were coming, he might have refused to see us. It was entirely possible that Robin was Jack’s grandson. I doubted that Jack would say a word about that but I was unhappy at the prospect of hurting him again and reopening old wounds. Yet, the closer we came, the more important it seemed that he meet Robin and one day, I hoped, Clara. I’d brought with me the Christmas card, keeping it in my pocket whenever my resolve wavered.

One morning, as drearily blue and perfect as all the others, I told Robin over breakfast that we were off to visit his great-uncle Jack.

‘I didn’t know I had an uncle.’

‘A great-uncle. But I’m afraid that means he’s old rather than that he’s super-duper,’ I explained, clearing that up before he was disappointed.

‘I didn’t know I had an old uncle, then.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. We fell out.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I took something of his and didn’t give it back.’

‘What?’

‘Grandma.’

‘Oh.’

He studied me carefully, clearly interested. I knew that Clara would certainly not approve of my telling him – believing that children ought to be sheltered from ‘the truth’. Only she wasn’t here, and it seemed rather pointless to conceal a fifty-year feud from an eight-year-old.

‘Are you going to say sorry? That’s what you’re supposed to do when you take something that isn’t yours.’

‘I tried that already. Although it was quite some time ago. And the thing is, Robin, I’m not completely sorry. I’m sorry that I upset him but I’m glad that I got to keep Grandma.’ I paused. ‘I probably oughtn’t to say that when I see him. I want him to forgive me. I want it very much indeed.’

Robin stared at me with great blue eyes so like his great-uncle Jack’s and made no remark.

As I sipped my strangely moreish muddy coffee, I smiled at my grandson. He was smeared with sunshine and chocolate spread and appeared perfectly untroubled by my confession.

‘Are you missing your mother and sisters? Would you like to telephone them?’ I asked, thinking of the complicated phone beside the fridge. The instructions might have been in large print but they were still indecipherable.

Robin shrugged. ‘Not really.’

‘And what about your father? Your mother asked me to try to talk to you. I know it’s all been a bit wretched at home.’

Robin shrugged and fidgeted. ‘I’m all right. I don’t like his girlfriend, Angela. Her voice is a semitone flat. She sounds like a wonky clarinet. I could never like a lady like that,’ he added with uncharacteristic vehemence.

‘I quite agree. Your mother has a nice voice. Melodic. Are you sure you don’t want to call her?’

Robin shook his head.

‘Good.’

I had promised to telephone Clara every other day, but after an initial phone call to tell her we’d landed, neither Robin nor I had fussed. I supposed I’d be in for it once we returned, but here, amongst the red watercolour sunsets and tangles of tropical flowers, home seemed sufficiently far off to risk her wrath.

My nervousness about our expedition showed: it took me four attempts to manoeuvre out of the parking garage. Robin tactfully said nothing, merely held the map open on his knee. I’d circled the address gleaned from the Christmas card in pink highlighter pen. In my anxiety, I drove more slowly than usual and a trail of bicycles zipped past, overtaking with a ting-a-ling of bells. We drove up a wide, sunlit road lined with palm trees and doctors’ offices, proclaiming the diseases of the aged: ‘Diabetes!’ ‘Cancer!’ ‘Baldness!’ in a macabre echo of the billboards in other cities, advertising ‘Coke’ and ‘Pepsi’.

I steered the car through a pair of vast gilded gates incorporating a pair of giant lotus flowers, their painted petals unfurling in the hot sun. The sign read: ‘The Lotus Club Condos and Golf Course’. The lurid green lawns seemed to be stretched taut either side of the driveway. Vines of crimson bougainvillea were draped along a white picket fence, and I noticed uniformed gardeners scooping the blossoms into wheelbarrows as soon as they fell. Clearly nothing could be allowed to brown or to blemish those unnaturally green lawns.

White-haired ladies and gentlemen puttered by in golf carts, narrowly missing the car. They made me think of children escaped from a fairground dodgem ride, ageing improbably during the adventure. I parked the car at the front of a large building with columns, part Grecian temple, part suburban shopping mall. I did not immediately open the door. It occurred to me that I’d told Robin we would be seeing Jack, but all I really had was his address and the assumption that five years on he would still be here. He might be out or on holiday or even dead.

‘We might not find Uncle Jack,’ I said. ‘I should really have said that before.’

‘OK,’ said Robin.

‘He’s not exactly expecting us.’

‘OK.’

We sat for another few minutes, neither of us making any move to get out of the car, the air-conditioning whining in desperation. This was absurd. We’d come this far. I eased myself out of the car and into the heat. I was used to the tender warmth of an English summer; here in Florida, stepping outside always felt like opening the oven door and then irrationally climbing in. With Robin beside me, I was forced to keep my apprehension to myself. We padded up the steps into the thankfully cool marble lobby of the clubhouse. A pleasant-looking African-American woman smiled at us with great pleasure as though the simple act of our walking through the door was the highlight of her entire morning.

‘Hello, how can I help you today? Are you here for lunch or a round of golf?’

‘I was wondering if you could tell me the number of Mr Jack Fox-Talbot’s condominium?’

Her smile drooped at the corners. ‘Is he expecting you, sir? We have to be mindful of our residents’ privacy.’

‘It’s a surprise. For great old uncle Jack,’ chirped Robin. ‘We’ve come all the way from England.’

She looked at Robin and then the smile grew perkier once again. ‘Of course.’

‘It’s his birthday, you see,’ I said, shamelessly building on Robin’s line.

‘Is it now? Goodness. Mr F-T is a dark horse. Shame on him.’

‘So you know him?’

‘Of course! Everyone loves Mr F-T. A genuine English gentleman,’ she said, rhyming ‘genuine’ with ‘wine’. She said it in the faintly patronising way that the young adopt when referring to the charms of the old – but I knew that if she’d known him forty years ago, she would have swooned with the rest of them.

‘I can call up to his apartment for you. What’s your name, sir?’

‘Oh, but that would spoil the surprise.’

I hadn’t come all this way to speak to Jack for the first time over a blasted intercom, with this woman eavesdropping on the whole thing.

‘You sound just like him,’ she said with a giggle. ‘I love the English accent. Adorable.’

I winced.

‘I’m his brother. I expect we must sound alike.’

‘Well, in that case. If you’re his brother, I suppose it wouldn’t be bending the rules too much to say that Mr F-T is often on the putting green before his lunch. I always book him a table in the terrace restaurant for twelve-thirty.’ Her face brightened. ‘Would you like me to change the booking to three people?’

‘Why not,’ I said, supposing that if Jack sent us packing, a larger luncheon table than necessary was unlikely to be his greatest concern.

Robin and I left the refrigerated cool of reception, and descended into the midday heat. The air was full of the hum of bees and golf carts. I wondered why on earth Jack had chosen such a place. Its hygienic soul unnerved me. It struck me as an unlikely spot to visit in order to seek forgiveness.

I was sweating beneath my lightweight, non-iron travel shirt and, as I stroked my chin, I noticed I’d missed a patch shaving. I glanced down at Robin, relieved once again at his presence. My legs trembled and I suspected that, without him, I might have slunk off, still ashamed after all these years. Instead, I nodded, took a breath and said, ‘Righto, can you spy the putting green, old sport? Ah, yes, there it is.’

We ambled over. Two men in improbably coloured socks hit balls, while a bosomy woman with a whiskery chin called encouragement. The group resonated with placid contentment.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘We’re looking for Mr Fox-Talbot.’

‘Oh, Mr F-T?’ said the woman with an alert enthusiasm – his appeal apparently had not diminished for the older gal. ‘He’s popped inside to the little boys’ room.’

I shuddered at the description while I thanked her.

‘Are you here to visit with F-T?’ asked the woman, removing her sunglasses.

‘Something like that.’

‘Because old F-T doesn’t get many visitors now. Not since, you know, Pam passed.’

‘Of course,’ I agreed, not knowing at all.

‘And who’s this little man?’ she asked, peering at Robin, a blob of coral lipstick on her teeth.

‘My name is Robin Bennet.’

The men in the candy-coloured socks putted happily, ignoring us. Jack would appear any moment. He probably wouldn’t hit me – he was over eighty – but beyond that I really had no idea what to expect. My heart began to do its awful thumpity-crash thing, and I tried to take slow breaths. It wouldn’t be the thing at all to die right here on the lurid grass and abandon Robin in this strange, sanitised place. My eyelids started to sweat. I blinked, and then, through a gauze of heat and apprehension, I saw him. Jack Fox-Talbot emerging from the gents, buttoning up his fly.

—

We sat in the air-conditioned café, drinking lemonade and not talking, Robin poised between us like a very short vicar whose presence ensured an outward display of civility. Every thirty seconds, or so it seemed, another pal stopped by to shake Jack’s hand and wish him a good morning. His blond hair was now a perfect snowy white and, to my envy, he appeared not to have lost any of it. His carriage was as upright as ever. He was as handsome at eighty-plus as he’d been at twenty-five and he had a light, pleasant tan, not the walnut furniture-polish sheen that I observed on others our age. He sported a dubious jazzy pink shirt but on him it succeeded in looking daring and dapper. The heat apparently did not faze him.

He did not look at me, and I sensed that he kept the well-wishers chatting for longer than necessary. Another lavender couple tottered off, chuckling improbably. Everyone here seemed to have been marinated in happiness. It was most disconcerting.

‘You were just passing Longboat Key, then?’ he said.

‘Not exactly.’

‘You might have called to let me know you were coming.’

‘I didn’t have your number.’

‘You could have written.’

‘I could have but I didn’t.’

Letters might be ignored.

‘How did you find me?’

‘A Christmas card you sent to Edie. I found it only a few months ago.’

He glanced at me and then looked away, visibly discomfited for the first time. ‘I was sorry to hear—’

‘You could have written.’

‘I could have but I didn’t.’

I studied him, this dashing stranger, and wondered whether I was really here to ask his absolution. I wanted the forgiveness of the man I’d wronged, not this handsome car salesman with gleaming teeth. I searched him for some sign of the man he used to be; the quick laugh, the playful charm. He stared back, unsmiling.

‘Another lemonade?’ we both asked Robin, who shook his head.

‘I’ve had four.’

‘Oh. Yes, best to stop then.’ Clearly I’d not been paying proper attention.

We retreated once more into silence.

‘You were married?’ I asked after a while.

‘To Pam. She passed around the same time as Edie.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He opened his wallet and showed me a snapshot with some pride. ‘She was a real doll. A super girl.’

The photograph showed a stout blonde woman in a sunhat on the golf course. She grinned at the camera, revealing a pleasant, warm smile and a splendid set of choppers. These Americans certainly knew how to do teeth. She looked frumpy and kind. Not the type to break his heart and run off with another man.

‘She was a ladies’ captain here. Magnificent golfer. Well, she was magnificent at most things she tried her hand at. A real good sort.’

The elegant shoulders sagged, just for a second, and I caught a glimpse of tenderness beneath the poise.

‘She left me a list of her friends that I should marry, if I got too lonely.’ He glanced uneasily over his shoulder. ‘It’s the only drawback about this place. Lots of widows on the prowl. You have to watch it. Better look out for yourself. If one of them sets her baseball cap at you, you’ll find yourself beside the pool, a piña colada in one hand while she rubs sunscreen onto your moles. You won’t ever leave.’

I laughed for the first time, glad that he hadn’t entirely lost his sense of humour.

Robin, however, looked concerned. ‘I don’t want to live here, Grandpa.’

‘It’s all right, darling. Uncle Jack is only being silly.’

Jack wiggled his ears and Robin relaxed. Jack glanced at his watch.

‘It’s nearly twelve-thirty. I’m going to have some lunch. Thanks for stopping by.’

He stood without inviting us to join him and I thought, well, that’s it then. I’ve seen him and that’s all there is to it. There was neither forgiveness nor reconciliation. But how could one reconcile with a stranger? I would have preferred anger to this bland indifference.

‘I’m hungry,’ announced Robin suddenly.

Jack hesitated. His eagerness to be rid of us warred with his inbred politeness.

‘Would you both like to join me?’

We traipsed back to the clubhouse, where the smiling receptionist greeted us with hearty enthusiasm.

‘You found your brother! Happy birthday, Mr F-T.’

He stared at her for a moment, bewildered. I recognised his look – the sudden fear that one has lost one’s marbles – and I took pity.

‘Sorry, old chap,’ I said quietly. ‘We had to tell her that. Only way she’d tell us where you were.’

He smiled at the woman. ‘Ah, yes. Thank you, Tabitha. Most kind. Twenty-one again.’ He raised his linen sunhat.

She snorted with laughter as though it was the first time she’d heard the joke. ‘You have a nice time, now, Mr F-T.’

We walked into the dining room, a fern-infested marble palace, with white driftwood walls and photographs everywhere of sunsets and the Y-tails of breaching whales. Framed signs, declaring banalities such as ‘Don’t worry, be happy!’ and ‘Tomorrow’s another day!’, shouted their drivel from the walls. The doors were thrown open to the outside and bright rays shone inside without being permitted to warm the room above pleasantly temperate. A single sunflower had been placed on every table, like a child’s drawing of the sun. The place reeked of cheerfulness.

A further parade of perky pensioners trundled past our table to talk to Jack, until I could bear it no longer.

‘For God’s sake. What’s wrong with everyone? Are they cracked or simple? Why are they all so bloody happy? It’s perfectly awful.’

Jack looked at me in surprise. ‘They’re content. How could anyone not be, here? We’re all retired. We have enough money. No responsibility. It’s a life of sunshine and ease. Golf and chicken dinners and blackcurrant martinis. What more could anyone want?’

A good deal, I wanted to say, but then I thought of the large empty house in Dorset that, no matter how much money I spent on heating, was never quite warm enough. Unless Robin came to visit, there were days when I spoke to no one. The winter lasted longer each year. Outside in the blue Florida afternoon the breeze made the fronds of a palm rustle like wrapping paper. It was seductive, I’d give him that.

We sipped our colourful drinks through straws, and ate fish, french fries and ice cream. The food on offer was like a children’s menu with a better wine list.

We chatted uneasily. No, Jack had never had children. They’d not been lucky in that regard. Pam had had a series of small dogs; the last one died only last year. The Lotus Club had been very generous in bending the no-pet rule for them but after General was put to sleep, Jack had decided against another.

‘You called your dog “General”?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘It had a horrible temper. Barked orders at everyone.’

He caught my eye, and I saw the twitch of a smile. Perhaps there was a little of the old Jack in there after all, a hint of wickedness concealed beneath that sleek white hair.

Robin pointed to a piano in the corner of the room, half hidden by yet more ferns.

‘Look, Grandpa! Can I play?’

‘It’s not an ordinary piano, Robin. It’s a pianola. It plays itself,’ said Jack. ‘We can ask the waitress to turn it on, if you like.’

Robin stared at him blankly as Jack called to the waitress.

‘Penny, my darling, would you mind awfully turning on the pianola for my young friend? He’s never seen one before.’ He smiled at Robin. ‘Who would you most like to hear play?’

‘Rachmaninov.’

Jack chuckled and shook his head. ‘Don’t think they’ll have him. Put it on Scott Joplin, would you, Penny?’

A second later, the pianola started to churn out ragtime tunes, the keys rippling beneath ghostly hands.

Robin gazed at it in a mixture of wonderment and horror.

‘Famous pianists record themselves playing onto discs, and then the pianola plays them,’ I said. ‘It’s like a record player but with a piano instead of speakers.’

‘It’s creepy,’ said Robin.

‘It is a bit,’ I agreed.

‘I like it,’ said Jack with a touch of defiance. ‘I can sit here with my cold glass of something-something and listen to a great musician on a Friday lunchtime.’

‘It’s not a musician,’ said Robin. ‘It’s a ghost.’

‘Or an echo,’ I agreed. ‘A great musician plays the same piece differently every time. He can’t play it in the identical way ever again, even if he wished to. Here, the music is trapped, forced to come out precisely the same. The exact nuance and expression.’

‘Good God, you’re just as much of a musical snob as you always were,’ said Jack, snappish.

‘And you’re just as much of a philistine,’ I said with a smile.

As he chuckled good-humouredly at the insult, I was relieved to have another glimpse, however watery, of the old Jack.

‘Look here, why don’t you record something, Robin?’ he asked. ‘Then I can listen to you when you’ve gone back home.’

‘He’s a splendid pianist,’ I said.

Robin frowned. ‘I don’t want to be a ghost.’

‘Every recording is a ghost in a way, Robin,’ I said. ‘You like it when we record you at home so you can listen to your practice. This isn’t very different.’

‘I suppose so. All right.’

In ten minutes the instruction book had been found, and Robin was seated at the pianola, an impromptu crowd of eager retirees huddled around him.

‘Does he want some sheet music?’ asked an elderly lady in shorts that revealed a tube map of varicose veins. ‘I’m sure my granddaughter left some behind in my condo. I can run and get it.’

‘That’s very kind, but he doesn’t need any. He keeps it all in his head,’ I said.

Usually I was circumspect about Robin’s remarkable gifts, until I came face to face with other grandparents, when to my chagrin I found it almost impossible not to brag just a bit.

He sat at the keyboard and played a few scales and then without a pause began to play a Mozart sonata in D major. The retired stockbrokers and real-estate agents, the housewives and lawyers, all listened, glancing around at one another, their mouths a series of surprised Os. This was a place of routine, where nothing out of the ordinary happened, where the menu always had the chicken and the sky was always the perfect colour-match shade of blue, and although every now and again a resident was carried out, never to return, even that was only to be expected. Genuine, goodness-gracious surprises were a precious rarity and here was four feet and two and a half inches of utter surprise and brilliance, sitting in the clubhouse restaurant in his sandals, a dab of tomato ketchup on his chin.

I felt a hand on my arm, and realised that Jack was squeezing me.

‘Good God, Fox. Good God. He’s a marvel.’

A second later, it occurred to me that this was the first time Jack had uttered my name.

—

Afterwards we strolled through the perfect gardens, which stretched down towards the golf course. Jack grilled Robin about his piano practice and he chattered back eagerly – there was nothing he liked better, if he wasn’t actually playing.

‘Five hours every day! I’m surprised you have time to sleep and eat.’

‘Sometimes I don’t shower.’

‘Washing is extremely overrated.’

Robin studied Jack with clear approval.

A pelican soared above the palms, its vast wingspan an echo of something prehistoric. Even the long grass was all precisely the same length, as though it had been strimmed with a ruler. An enormous butterfly landed on a brightly coloured bush and posed there, preening at its own beauty.

‘Look!’ shouted Robin in some excitement, pointing towards a blue pool near a manicured green. ‘A crocodile.’

A long brownish shape rested on the edge, a monster lurking in paradise, still as death and just as sinister. The butterfly fluttered beside its eye but it remained motionless, unblinking.

‘Ah, an alligator,’ said Jack. ‘A rather large one. Perhaps we should take the long way round.’

‘Are there many of them?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes. The club allows them to stay here until they’re about five feet or so. Then they’re carted off on a tour bus to the Everglades. It seems a bit unfair. Our little slice of Eden is built over their swamp.’

I glanced back at the alligator hunkered beside the pool, and the landscaped gardens seemed to shimmer as though they were a mirage. Beneath the layer of watered lawns peppered with sprinkler spouts, I sensed the ripple and ooze of the swamp. This manufactured paradise was only a thin layer; underneath the taut grass and the plastic pools, the wild and ancient shuddered and groaned. If there was old music here, it had been driven to the edges. Songs would seep out of the swamp in the dark.

We walked back to the car park, Robin running ahead, neither Jack nor I saying much. I paused beneath a cupola of sky-blue jacquemontia.

‘Jack, why don’t you come home for a visit? Come and see the old place once more?’

He frowned and looked away. For a second he looked old.

‘No. I won’t ever go back. I left and that was it.’

‘But it would do you good. This place . . .’

I shrugged, somehow unable to explain how uneasy its perfection made me. I was relieved that Robin was here with me, to remind me of home and other things, otherwise I could see how tempting it would be to slide into a routine of early chicken dinners and rounds of sun-drenched bridge, surrendering all thought and desire. The magic kingdom wasn’t in Disney World; it was right here amongst the retirement villages and flawless golf greens of southern Florida.

‘I would very much like you to visit. Come for as long or as short a trip as you like. I want you to meet my girls. You really ought to meet Clara.’

I was conscious that it must seem tactless to press the point, considering his lack of children or grandchildren, but it felt terribly important to me that he come. Perhaps he no longer wondered whether Clara might be his daughter.

‘It’s very kind of you, but no thank you. With all this, why would I go anywhere else?’

Fronds of lurid flowers trembled in the breeze. The sprinklers clicked on with a whirr.

‘Don’t you want to see home again?’ I asked, knowing I was stepping onto dangerous ground with both feet.

‘Home?’ he said. ‘Home?’

And his voice was so ugly and bitter that I knew he had not forgiven me for taking it from him.

‘I live here now,’ he said at last, with an easy smile. ‘I’ll never leave. Why would I? This is paradise.’

He walked me to the car and shook hands with Robin. He did not invite us to come and see him again before we left. Two days later Robin and I flew to Disney World.