When I was ten, and my twin brothers, Jerry and John, were eight years old, we all lived on Lord Rathmore’s estate, deep in the heart of the Kent countryside. Up at the Hall there were lots of servants who lived-in, but the gamekeeper, the cowman, and the gardener each had a cottage of their own. And so did we, For Dad was the estate carpenter, which sounds rather grand but really means he patched fences, mended pigsties, repaired the sheds and stables, and fixed anything else you care to name.

Needless to say, the place was paradise for us children. There were climbable trees everywhere, ponds with minnows so numerous they tickled your toes, and snow on the branches in winter, thick and white as the tail of a bobbing rabbit.

Mum was not too keen on the snow, though. It meant that, when the thaw came, the rising damp crept stealthily up the walls of our little parlour, and the gutters choked with the rotting leaves off the previous autumn, overflowed.

You would have thought that Dad, being the estate carpenter, would have turned his hand to such jobs as these, but he hardly ever did, for two reasons. The first was that he was all-in after his day’s work, which after all was to be expected.

The other reason was the one you would never guess. As soon as he had had his big strong cup of tea, and while supper was cooking, he would go into the musty little parlour where there was an old piano with the yellowed keys, left there by the previous tenants, who probably had thought it not worth moving. If dusk had fallen, Dad would light the candles and then, with loving care, take from its velvet-lined case and the old fiddle that had been his father’s. Then he would call me in and with the simple accompaniments he had taught me, would plunge bravely into the old familiar tunes like “Killarney” or the Londonderry Air.

Neither of the boys cared for music, and Mum said she had no patience with it, so most times it was just Dad and me in our private world of candlelight and the aching melodies of old songs.

Yes, Dad loved music. “Work is something you live by,” he said, “but music is something you live for.”

One evening in the spring of the year that I was ten, Dad and I were in the parlour, running through all the tunes we knew. Mum called us to supper. Dad, with a sigh, laid the fiddle back into its shabby old case. I wriggled off the piano stool, and we went back into the kitchen of the cottage where Mum was dishing up the meal. The fragrant smell of a rabbit stew assailed our nostrils.

“Smells good,” said Dad, appreciatively pulling out a chair for Mum, “What’s cooking?”

“Stew and dumplings. And make the most of it for they’ll be no more tomorrow.”

“Why on earth not, lass?” said Dad who, in his preoccupied way, had no notion of how far the housekeeping money went.

“Because the cupboard’s empty, laddie,” answered Mum tartly, helping herself and my two brothers to the steaming stew, then sitting down deliberately of the table.

“Now see here, James. You’re to go to his lordship in the morning, and ask what he means by not payin’ you the wages that’s rightfully yours.”

Mum’s voice sounded sharp, but you could hear that she was also trying to sound reasonable. His lordship allowed us to have our cottage rent-free and to take any vegetables we needed from the gardens, but he was tardy in paying his workmen their wages. True, they got them after a time but, as Mum said, we needed our boots and shoes as soon as winter came, not the following summer.

When our plates were empty, Mum served us all with a generous helping of apple pie, then returned to the battle.

“And mind you tell him it’s time we had the water laid on, instead of having to use that old well. And we need a proper dampcourse put in. Ye said yourself this auld place is damp as a tomb.’

Dad, in his shy, sensitive way, flushed up under Mum’s sharp words.  It was not first time he had had to wait for his wages and he hated asking for them. Although the same, he said quietly, he would go up to the big house in the morning.

After breakfast, I had nothing much to do, the boys having gone off on some errand of their own, so I dressed myself quickly and tagged along with Dad on his way up to the Hall. We walked up the lane, swampy with spring rain and fragrant with the scent of primroses, and presently the great house came into sight, the bright sun dazzling on its big windows and casting deep shadows into the angles of the old grey stonework. One of the windows was open, and somewhere I could hear the sound of a piano and someone singing.

“That will be Miss Anthea,” said my father. “Been away, she has, learning music in Paris. They say she has a wonderful talent.”

Miss Anthea, however, was not much on our minds at that moment because Dad was worriedly trying to work out how best to corner Lord Rathmore without showing disrespect.

That very instant the problem solved itself, for Hawkins, the Butler appeared at the servant’ entrance and damped our hopes with the news that his lordship was away for a month in the south of France. As he spoke, a bell rang softly in the interior of the house, and he went away before reappearing a few minutes later.

“Miss Anthea wants to see you,” he told Dad. He gave me a dubious look, then said, “You’d better go in to.  And “

It was all new experience for me. Dad took off his cap. We trotted along behind Hawkins through the servants’ quarters and into that part of the house where the Family lived where we were eventually shown into a drawing room, the grandest room I have ever seen.  Momentarily I glimpsed hangings of silk and gilded tables and chairs, but there was no time to study our surroundings in detail because my attention was claimed by the enormous grand piano which occupied pride of place in the center of the room.  Seated at the instrument was a slender, brown-haired girl, who rose and came gracefully towards us.

“Hello, there,” she said. Her voice was friendly. “I’m Anthea Rathmore.” Her merry dark eyes found father’s blue ones. “I’m so sorry my father is a way.”

Something odd had happened to Dad. He stood there awkwardly twisting his cap in his hands and muttering something very quietly about wages…and that it didn’t really matter.

Then Miss Anthea was speaking again in her lovely voice, which was pitched quite low, but made you think laughter could come bubbling out at any moment.

“And now,” she was saying, “My wretched piano stool is broken, which means no more practice today unless….”

Down to a work from his trance and suddenly started rooting in his pockets, pulling out a screwdriver in one hand and a fistful of screws in the other, and within ten minutes had mended the stool.

Miss Anthea thanked him with charming gratitude. The job, she said, had been done splendidly and no one could have done a better. Dad had saved her a whole lot of time and bother, and now she would be able to return to her day’s practice.

That, presumably, would have been the end of it. But Dad, prompted perhaps by her warm praise, suddenly blurted out, “That was a mighty pretty piece you were playing, Miss Anthea.”

The girl looked at Dad with mild astonishment.

“Chopin? I’m never really sure I like him or not.” Her dark eyes roamed unthinkingly over Dad’s strong, lean, work-hardened frame.

“I prefer something more robust,” she said, then blushed, “Musically speaking, of course. Do you play yourself?”

“Only by ear, Ma’am, and the fiddle at that.”

She paused for a moment, then turned and rang the bell.

“Hawkins,” she said when the Butler appeared, “Fetch the Amati from the music room.”

Hawkins came back with the Amati which, to my disappointment, was just another old fiddle like Dad’s and Miss Anthea handed the instrument to my father.

“Play something,” she said.

After some preliminary fumbling, Dad tucked the instrument under his chin and struck up what he intended to be a lively rendering of “The Wearing of the Green.”

But something was wrong.

When the tune was finished, we took our leave, carefully avoiding Miss Anthea’s eyes. On the way home I asked him what it happened.

“The Lord only knows,” he said unhappily, “It didn’t seem the same without my own fiddle. Couldn’t get the hang of that one at all.”

I squeezed his hand to cheer him up, and said it was best if the folk at the big house kept their Chopins and their Amatis to themselves, and left us with our own kind of music. Anyway it was probably the last we would hear of it. But I was wrong.

The next day Miss Anthea sent a message over to our cottage saying that Dad was to go up to the Hall again. This time he went alone, and when he came back he told us that there was to be a music festival for all the local villages, with a prize of ten whole pounds for the best violin solo, and that Miss Anthea, had entered his name in the contest. Miss Anthea, he said, wanted him to go up to the Hall every day and practice for the event.

Mum said that ten pounds was all very well, but who was going to get the wood for the fire, draw the water, cook the meals, take care of the children, while he was up gallivanting at the Hall? I thought this was a rather odd thing to say, as she did all these things anyway.

Dad wouldn’t listen. He had a faraway look in his eyes.

Every day Dad went up to the Hall in the afternoon. There was no doubt he was enjoying himself, doing what he had always wanted to do, and he smiled more often than I had seen before.

I asked him about the music, and he said, with Miss Anthea’s help he had almost perfected the scherzo that she had helped him to choose as his principle entry in the competition, and he was now working on the old ballad “The Mountains of Mourne” in case the audience demanded an encore.

Mum paid no attention to what she called “your father’s nonsense” and said that as far as she was concerned the mountains of Mourne could tumble into the sea and disappear, if it would only leave Dad free to do some chores, and as for that “Miss Anthea”, huh, she was a witch, a jezebel!

The month passed. Lord Rathmore’s trip was coming to an end. Dad knew he would soon have to occupy himself once more with his much-neglected work on the estate, so for the last few days he spent practically all his time up of the Hall, which made Mum madder than ever.

On the day before his lordship’s return, after he had had his tea, Dad went into the parlour and came out looking perplexed.

“Where’s the fiddle, lass?” he asked Mum.

She faced him defiantly, but colour flared in her cheeks.

“I’ve sold it,” she said flatly.

“Sold it, woman! Who to, for the Lord’s sake?”

“I’m not telling you, James. And if you don’t want the length of me tongue you won’t ask.”

Dad knew better than to argue when she spoke like that. For the time being it was better to keep quiet. Anyway, he had made up his mind to use the old fiddle for the competition, and perhaps by the time that they arrived he could get around her. But he had no luck. Mum was adamant, and she refused to tell him who she had sold it to, so he knew in the end he would have to borrow the hated Amati.

The week dragged by, with Mum and Dad barely on speaking terms, and the day of the Festival, which was to be held in the Parish Hall, came around at last. Mum said we children might as well go, we could be out of her way, and pursing her lips, put out Dad’s  broadcloth suit and a fresh, clean shirt, but at the last minute he said crossly that it made him feel like a dressed-up monkey and he abandoned the suit in favor of his ordinary jacket and breeches which, while they were far more comfortable, did nothing to make him look like a musical virtuoso.

He was not in the best of moods for another reason. Miss Anthea had not lent him the Amati, but quite a different instrument. At the last minute she had kindly but firmly refused him the Amati saying it was far too valuable an object to leave the Hall without being specially insured for the event. So what with the inexplicable change in Miss Anthea’s attitude, the unfamiliar instrument, and Mum’s angry aloofness, he had a lot on his mind.

When we got there, the Parish Hall was packed to the doors. Everyone from our village and the outlying ones had turned up to hear their sons and daughters, uncles and aunts, grandfathers and grandmothers play their pieces.

There were some mighty boring turns before Dad came on. The butcher’s wife sang “Annie Laurie” in a curious, lowing voice. A precocious little boy played “The Blue Danube” unfairly well, and a string quartet scraped and puffed its way through something by Haydn.

Then it was Dad’s turn, and for all our hopeful expectations I hung my head when I heard it, for it was just like his terrible performance the first day at the hall, all over again.

When he had finished there was an awful silence. No one clapped. Dad was just going to make his way forlornly down off the platform when, suddenly, there was a disturbance in the crowd. Someone was pushing forward towards the platform, and I was astonished to see that it was my mother, her face flushed and her hat awry.

She had the old fiddle cases under her arm and held it out to Dad.

“Here, take it,” she said, “It’s all you’ve ever wanted.”

By now, everyone in the Hall was watching the scene of the platform. One of the judges asked if there was a problem. Dad muttered something about having to play on another person’s instrument. The judge nodded, and indicated that he was free to play again if he wished.

This time the outcome was quite different. As he drew the bow gently across the strings of the old familiar instrument the sweet notes of the old tune “Kathleen Mavoureen” floated into the Hall, tender and melancholy. You could see his heart was in the music, and I saw tears in Mum’s eyes. Her name, like mine, was Kathleen and it may have been that the melody brought back memories of the single, carefree days when they had courted in Ireland. Who knows?

As the notes died away, there was a second of silence and then tremendous clapping.

We ran and hugged him as he came off the platform and then we all went and sat at the back until the result of the contest was announced. As it happened, Dad was adjudged not first, but second, the precocious little boy having out shone everybody else. Dad’s prize was the sum of five

.Perhaps it was the difference they had had over the Amati which caused Miss Anthea to become cool towards him, but from that day onwards she lost all interest in Dad’s supposed musical talent. A cousin of hers, Captain Carstairs, came to stay at the Hall, and not long afterwards we heard they were to be married. As for Dad, you would have thought, having got his fiddle back, our musical evenings in the parlour would have been resumed, but oddly enough they were not. Instead Dad sent the boys inmate of bed early and remained in the warm kitchen chatting companionably, perhaps for the first time since their marriage, to Mum.

We had a wireless set by then, and sometimes he would cock his ear and listen, and say, “They don’t write music like that now.” But that was as far as it ever went.

In due time my brothers and I got married and left the cottage, and Mum and Dad went back to Ireland to spend their last days in the green country where they had their roots. And as for the old fiddle, I never saw it again. I wonder what happened to it?