Ellie and The Harp-Maker

by Hazel Prior

  I put down the receiver, my mind flipping feverishly around.

  Clive stands up and stretches. ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘It’s somebody from the hospital in Taunton,’ I answer quickly. ‘It’s about Christina. She’s had a little accident. She’s all right, but she needs a friend. I must go and see her.’

  ‘An accident? What sort of accident?’

  ‘An accident with a tin opener,’ I improvise. ‘It sliced into her hand. Really quite nasty, and she can’t drive. I’d better take off straight away, Hon. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Get yourself lunch. There’s a quiche in the fridge. If it’s going to be a really long time I’ll ring you.’

  He starts moaning about how Christina’s timing is impeccable (not) and doesn’t she realize that most people have things to do on a Saturday morning, but I’m not listening.

  I rush from the house, giving thanks to all the gods that it wasn’t Clive who’d answered the phone. I feel so stupid. I should have told him long ago all about my harp-playing and my visits to the Harp Barn. But now isn’t the time. I just need to make sure Dan is all right.

  My head’s a mess on the drive to Taunton. A blur of horrible possibilities, images full of blood and gore. I curse when I get stuck behind a slow tractor and recklessly overtake it on a bend.

  The hospital car park has me driving round in circles for ages before I find a space. I launch myself into the nearest building and rush up and down passageways searching wildly for A&E. There are a multitude of signs and arrows around, but not the one I’m looking for. Everyone I meet looks too ill to ask.

  At last the department appears, right there in front of me. The receptionist is a plump, middle-aged woman with platinum-blonde hair and a super-sized smirk. The smirk grows even bigger when I say I am here to see Dan Hollis.

  ‘Ah, the pheasant man.’ She grins. ‘Down to the end of the corridor and the last door on your right. Just follow the trail of disaster.’

  I speed down the corridor, noticing no particular signs of disaster as I go, just a rather strong smell of bleach. I knock and put my head round the door of the room. The first thing I see is Dan, sitting with his leg in bandages and his arms wrapped around a fat pheasant. His head is bent low over the bird. The pheasant also appears to be bandaged and is looking droopy and fed up. A young nurse with a clip file is seated beside Dan, gently remonstrating. Her small, round face betrays signs of frustration and helplessness.

  ‘Dan! What on earth happened?’ I cry. He looks up. He is deathly white.

  ‘Ah, ah, ah,’ he murmurs.

  ‘Dan, it’s all right. It’s me, Ellie. Are you OK?’

  ‘Not OK, not OK,’ he tells me. ‘I’ve been shot.’

  ‘So I gathered.’ I step towards him. ‘Is it very painful?’

  He doesn’t answer so I turn to the nurse. ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘Not so very bad,’ she reassures me. But behind the veneer of professional confidence I detect a note of panic in her voice. ‘He’s lucky the femoral artery wasn’t damaged. Although to be honest the shot sank in deeper than we would have liked. We’ve removed it of course. The main thing is to keep the wound clean to avoid infection. That means changing the dressings regularly, which will be difficult for him as the wound is at the back of the thigh. Perhaps you could help with that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We’ve given him some pretty strong pain relief which should have kicked in by now. I think it’s the shock more than anything that’s the problem. And … um, he won’t let go of the pheasant. He just won’t let go, no matter what we say. Which is why we’ve had to put him in this room on his own. We’re not allowed to have birds in here.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I say sympathetically.

  ‘We’ll have to persuade him to let go somehow, or else use force I’m afraid. Are you his …’

  ‘Friend,’ I put in firmly. I turn to Dan. ‘Dan, you must let go of the pheasant.’

  He strokes the bird protectively. ‘No.’

  ‘Dan, you have to!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dan, please!’

  He wraps both arms around it.

  ‘Dan, you can’t hold it for ever. Just let go.’

  ‘No. I will hold him for ever if need be.’

  ‘But why?’ pleads the nurse.

  Dan is rocking slightly. He smooths the bird’s feathers. ‘He won’t know what to do in a hospital. He will flap.’

  I can’t argue with this logic. I look at the nurse again and she shrugs. ‘Your friend has been so stubborn,’ she hisses, loud enough for him to hear. ‘He insisted that we put a bandage on the poor bird before we were even allowed to touch his own wound. It has all been most awkward. Luckily Dr Fribbs was prepared to bend the rules in the interests of stopping your man bleeding to death. But really, we do have to get rid of the pheasant now – one way or another.’

  She looks at me meaningfully. Dan turns his eyes upon her. They are flaring. ‘Don’t kill him,’ he cries. He clutches the pheasant a little tighter. It lets out a plaintive squawk.

  ‘Two questions,’ I say, beginning to take control of the situation. Clearly somebody has to. ‘Is Dan well enough to leave the hospital and is the pheasant … well enough to leave the hospital?’

  The nurse consults her clip file and clears her throat. ‘Dan should be able to go home in a while, once the doctor’s been in again. He’ll have to keep his leg up as much as possible, and the dressing will have to be changed daily. As for the bird, I’m in no position to say. It was bleeding plenty too, but the wound has been disinfected and bandaged. If I was to take a bet on it I’d say it’ll live.’ She adds as an afterthought: ‘If, that is, it can still forage for food and get away from predators with its broken wing, and avoid getting shot again, which I doubt.’

  Dan winces.

  ‘Dan, I’ll take the pheasant.’ I reach out my arms to receive it, not quite believing what I’m doing.

  Dan is still reluctant. ‘Where will you put him?’ he asks.

  ‘Safe and sound in my car,’ I answer. ‘He will be warm, he will be comfortable. We’ll return him to Exmoor just as soon as we can.’

  At last Dan seems satisfied. He delivers the long-suffering, feathery bundle into my arms.

  15

  Dan

  Phineas is extremely handsome. He has a rich green sheen on his head and a white ring round his neck like a vicar’s collar. His cheeks are a deep red, which makes him look permanently embarrassed. He has feathers of brown and russet and luminescent rose all over his rounded frame. His tail is long, beautifully tapered and elegantly striped. His eyes are round and bright, very. How could anyone want to shoot him?

  He has been through a lot. He was terrified. We both were. I don’t think he enjoyed being threatened (neither did I) or manhandled (neither did I) and he did not like the car journey one bit (neither did I). He did not at all like the man with the gun (neither did I), he did not enjoy being inside the hospital (neither did I), he did not like being bandaged (neither did I) and above all he just wanted to escape back to the peace and quiet of Exmoor (so did I).

  He was nestled in a tartan rug in the back of Ellie’s car when I next saw him. It was the same rug that I put her harp on top of when I first gave it to her. Phineas looked quite comfortable in the rug, but I took him on to my knee for the journey because he doesn’t like engine noises. That’s another thing we have in common. Ellie put the passenger seat right back for us both because my leg would only go straight out and there wasn’t much room for it. My leg and Phineas’s wing are going to cause us both some problems, I can see that.

  There are always reasons for things. It’s a good thing I gave Ellie that harp, not only because it was on her before-forty list but also because if I hadn’t given her a harp then Phineas and I wouldn’t have had anyone to take us home after we got shot. My girlfriend Roe Deer or my sister Jo might have been prevailed upon to give me a lift back, but they wouldn’t have cared
about Phineas, I know that. They would have said he is only a pheasant, why didn’t you just let him get shot and eaten like other pheasants? And Roe Deer would have left him behind in Taunton because she would never permit a pheasant to be anywhere near her. I know this because she once said birds were fine from a distance but up close she didn’t like them on account of their scratchiness. She has never actually been scratched by a bird, it is just some strange notion that she has. She has a lot of those.

  And if I had asked my sister Jo to bring Phineas home to Exmoor she would have told me I make her scream and tear out her hair because Jo says that a lot about nearly everything I do or say. (She does not really tear her hair out though, because if she tore out a single tuft of it every time she said that she would have none left. And just to be clear about this, Jo is not bald. Not at all.) I don’t know what Jo would have done with Phineas. I somehow don’t think she would have been sympathetic to his needs.

  Ellie is different in that way. That is why it was Ellie’s name that I gave to Laurence Burbage.

  ‘Why do you call him Phineas?’ Ellie asked me as we drove out of the hospital car park.

  I told her I had to call him something and it seemed to suit him. He had the look of a Phineas. And besides, I was partial to alliteration.

  ‘Phineas the Pheasant,’ she said, emphasizing the Phs. She glanced across at him. ‘Yes, you’re right. It does seem to suit him somehow.’

  Phineas opened his beak and a sound midway between a sigh and a squawk came out.

  ‘And what are you planning to do with him when we get back?’ Ellie enquired.

  I said I thought Phineas was likely to be hungry after his ordeal. I wasn’t sure Phineas would like sandwiches very much but I had a seed and grain mixture that I sometimes put out for the garden birds. Perhaps Phineas would deign to partake of some of that.

  ‘But will you release him back into the wild?’ she asked. ‘With that bandage round his wing he’s a bit vulnerable, isn’t he?’

  I answered that indeed Exmoor was a place fraught with dangers as far as Phineas was concerned. In his injured state he was unlikely to fly again, certainly for a while. Given that human beings often acted irresponsibly, one of them (to be more specific, a Hooray Henry) might try and shoot him again, and at present Phineas was poorly camouflaged. The white bandage would show up very plainly against the green grass, or the brown moorland, or the purple heather – or indeed any kind of background except for snow, and I didn’t think snow was forecast for some time yet. Bearing these things in mind, I said I would do my best to look after Phineas and keep him in the orchard, which has a stone wall around it and a high hedge at the back, so Hooray Henrys probably wouldn’t go in there; and also it has a woodshed where he can take shelter when it rains. I hoped he would be satisfied with these arrangements.

  I stroked Phineas gently on the head and neck as I was outlining these ideas to Ellie, and he made quiet chuntering noises to express his approval.

  When we arrived back home Ellie helped us both out of the car. I couldn’t walk very well and progress was slow. The people from the hospital had lent me some crutches and the crutches helped, but I couldn’t manage them and carry Phineas at the same time so I entrusted him to Ellie. She was gentle with him and he seemed to know that he was all right with her. We went out the back first, into the orchard, and she placed him under the plum tree. He flapped off a bit but not very far. His eyes were upon us, beady and bright.

  ‘I’d better go and get the birdseed,’ I said, starting to hobble back to the barn.

  ‘No, stay here, I’ll get it,’ said Ellie and dashed off. She dashed back a moment later. ‘Where do you keep it?’ she panted.

  I told her it was in the kitchen cupboard next to the coffee jar. She now knows where the coffee jar is because these days she helps herself to coffee. (This is a good thing. The more coffee aromas around the barn, the happier I and my nose tend to be.) She raced off again to fetch the bird food.

  Phineas trotted round while we were waiting. I told him to make himself at home. He put his head at different angles and stuck his beak into a lot of things and looked as though he was doing exactly that.

  Ellie returned, brandishing the packet of seed. ‘Phineas!’ she called and threw a little in his direction.

  He looked at it sideways then darted forward and pecked it. We watched him for a while.

  ‘He’s quite a character, isn’t he?’ said Ellie.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘And he’s not the only one,’ she muttered. Then she said (slightly louder): ‘After everything he’s put you through, I do hope he’ll be safe tonight.’

  I was hoping that, too. I told her about another plan I had just been conceiving. My new plan was this: to make Phineas up a bed in the barn, on the ground floor, with the harps. I had decided this would be a good idea because, although we had established that Hooray Henrys probably wouldn’t be prowling around in the orchard, what might be prowling around the orchard was foxes, and they were also very likely to take advantage of his disability. Phineas would have to sleep in the barn for the time being, for his own safety. I hoped he wouldn’t mind being among harps. Harps are very peaceful and not unlike trees, so it probably wouldn’t be a problem for him. What might be a problem though was the feeling of restriction that being indoors would place on him. I was therefore also planning to install for him a pheasant flap with top hinges; a new design, bigger and better than a cat flap. This way he could come and go to his heart’s content. I probably wouldn’t manage to get it made by bedtime tonight, but I would do it as soon as I possibly could, for Phineas’s well-being and comfort.

  ‘Lucky Phineas!’ Ellie said.

  Ellie and I then went round and into the barn ourselves. I showed her the place in the corner where I would make up Phineas’s bed and the place in the back door where I would install his pheasant flap. After she’d expressed her amazement at my ingenuity and devotion, she suggested it might be a good idea for me to see if I could get upstairs. I tried it. I discovered that, with one crutch and the help of the banister, I could still get up the seventeen steps to the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom and the little room where Ellie practises, which is a very lucky thing indeed.

  Ellie then got me a glass of water and made me some sandwiches, cheese and pickle, rectangular, in super-quick time.

  ‘Do you need me to help you make up Phineas’s bed?’ she asked, surveying my leg.

  I told her no, I could manage. I still had my hands.

  She moved from one foot to the other in the way she does sometimes. ‘The doctors gave me a big bag of extra dressings for your leg. They said your wound needs to be washed and dressed regularly. I thought I could easily do that and check up on you when I come for my harp practice … or will Roe Deer be coming round to help you …?’

  I told her I doubted Roe Deer would be changing my dressings because Roe Deer has a particularly strong dislike of blood, and that it would be very kind of Ellie to do it if she didn’t mind such things.

  She answered that of course she didn’t mind at all, that I had given her a harp and it was the least she could do. And if there was anything else she could do, I must just ask. She said I could ring her if there was ever anything I needed. She stopped and added that please – unless, of course, it was an emergency – would I never ring her during the weekend or on weekdays after five thirty?

  Then she said she really had to be going because her husband would be badly needing his dinner. She would find a way to call in on me tomorrow, although it was a Sunday. And she would bring a meal because it is difficult to cook and things when you have to keep your leg up. And then she pecked me on the cheek and said, ‘Dan, do take care.’ Her hair flew as she dashed away downstairs and out of the barn. I watched her from the window. She dived into her car and drove away very quickly indeed.

  16

  Ellie

  ‘Christina, will you do me a favour?’

  ‘Yes, of cour
se, Ellie. Anything you like. Anything at all!’

  ‘I want you to lie to my husband.’ It’s hard to hear my voice saying this. I’ve always thought of myself as a straightforward, open sort of person. Now it seems I’m not only capable of deception, I’m totally immersed in it. Dragging my friend into the sticky mire too. Honourable. Admirable. Nice one, Ellie.

  ‘Sorry, the line’s bad. Did you say you want me to lie with your husband?’

  This is deliberate but I’m not in the mood for her messing around. ‘No, Christina! Lie to my husband. Lie to Clive.’

  ‘Lie to Clive? Certainly. It’ll be my pleasure. What about?’

  ‘It’s to do with the harp-playing. I’m afraid I was put in a bit of a spot yesterday.’

  I outline Dan’s mad heroics for the sake of a pheasant. I describe my trip to the hospital and the flustered excuses thrown at Clive.

  ‘Wonderful!’ she cries. Christina is a vegan and animal rights campaigner. Her idea of heaven would be to live in a donkey sanctuary or lost pandas home or suchlike. In the past she’s owned rabbits, chickens and a colony of guinea pigs (all classed as dearly beloved family members), but now there’s just her and Miaow. ‘I like this Dan guy more and more!’ she declares. ‘He risks his life to save a pheasant, he’s creative and he’s good-looking. You’ll really have to introduce me to him. Unmarried, you say?’

  ‘Yes, but with a girlfriend. My harp teacher, remember?’

  ‘Oh yes. And you say she’s a sex-bomb?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Shame. Oh well. If he shows any signs of getting tired of her, just send him along to me, will you? Or have you still got designs on him yourself?’

  ‘Christina, I’m a respectable married woman!’

  ‘Sorry, the line’s buzzing again. What was that about being a repressed married woman?’

  I snort. ‘Troublemaker!’

  She cackles at me. At least one of us is having fun.