by Hazel Prior
Clive Ellie’s husband was sprawled against a log pile at the end of the shed. His arms and legs were struggling to pull him up. I stared. He heaved himself upright and turned to face the light. The muscles of his forehead were pulsing and his fists were clenched again. I could see that he was about to hurl himself at me a second time. His mouth had turned into a great black cave and from that cave came a dragon’s roar. There wasn’t time to think so I did what my instinct told me to do. I waited a few seconds until he was almost upon me, then skirted to the side and stuck out a foot. He tripped over it and ploughed on to the floor.
That was the end of my fight with Clive Ellie’s husband.
What happened next was that I bent over him and asked if he was OK. He was making spluttery noises. They almost sounded like laughter, but not quite. He seemed to be trying to get something out of his pocket. At last he managed it, and held the something out towards me.
‘You’d better take these,’ is what he said.
42
Ellie
I woke up with a throbbing head and stiff limbs, a faint murmur in my ears. I sat up. My nose was blocked, my eyes gummed together. I scraped a hand over my face, forced my eyes open and tried to make out the world around me. No moonlight was visible in the black square of the window, but narrow threads of yellow between the floorboards betrayed some sort of light downstairs. The candle was still burning on the table by the bed.
Dan’s bedroom door was open. I wrapped the rug around my shoulders and listened. The background murmur was his voice. Had he brought Thomas home, or was he talking to Phineas, as I did? Curiosity awakened, I hauled myself from the bed. Still slightly nauseous, I went to the door, pulling the rug round myself with one hand, clutching the candle with the other. I passed through the little room. My harp stood there in the glow like a still sentinel. I tottered down the first few steps.
I froze. The rug fell around my feet. There, below me in the workshop, lit by a couple of torches on the floor, was my husband. He was seated on one of Dan’s chairs in a slumped position. Dan stood in front of him, talking in hushed tones. He was holding something. It looked like one of my jumpers, but it seemed to be sopping wet. He dropped it on to the floor by his feet, where there was a pile of other damp materials that looked familiar. His voice was a steady torrent but his hands were becoming more and more manic, wriggling and slicing wildly at the air.
The events of the past few hours spun round in my head. I had no idea what to do.
I drew back, breathless. My foot creaked on the stair. At once Dan looked up and saw me. He was wearing his thick brown jacket. He looked extremely alert but his posture was oddly twisted. His hair stood up in wild sprigs.
Slowly, Clive raised his head too. He stared at me. I could hardly bear to look back at him but neither could I drag my eyes away. Red streaks of blood ranged across his cheeks and forehead. His face was blotched with dust and bruises. His eyes were bloodshot. But more than all of these it was his expression that alarmed me. Instead of the tight rage that I’d witnessed over the past weeks, it was fraught with indescribable horror.
I winced, and the candle slipped and fell from my grasp. I was aware of my heart hammering, of Clive’s eyes, Dan’s upturned face, the crowd of harps, the flame travelling downwards. The moment pulsated between us; stark and grim, full of questions.
A bright flare sprouted up from the floor of the room below. It seemed to survey the scene for a second, wave gleefully and then burst upwards and outwards. Clive catapulted out of his chair and Dan staggered back. The damp heap on the floor exploded into a volcano, hurling out wild tongues of fire. The workshop flashed and flickered before my eyes. How could this be happening?
I screamed. I tried to move but my legs refused to work. I knew I should find a phone, find some water, run, do something, but I couldn’t. I was a wild animal caught in the headlamps, mesmerized by the doom that was hurtling towards me.
Great, amber wings of flame unfurled and spread outwards. Fire rushed towards the walls. It swooped and swirled in livid bundles of brightness under the windows. Then it changed direction and lapped back across the floor, a tide of crackling energy. Plumes of smoke rose. The air rippled with heat. Faster and faster the flames multiplied. They skipped hither and thither among the heaps of sawdust. They leapt through the frames of the chairs. They licked up the spines of the harps and danced feverishly among the strings. Everything was engulfed in a seething mass of orange.
The two men below had become black shapes against the glare. It seemed that one was moving towards me, the other away from me, but I couldn’t be sure. I could hear creaking, hissing, roaring and a half-musical twanging – a dreadful, eerie sound. I realized, with a sharp twist in my heart, that it was the sound of harps tortured, harps dying. I gawped at the jagged wall of fire before me. It pranced like a swarm of demons performing some bloodthirsty ritual. Heat rolled towards me in waves. The brightness seared. My eyes stung. Clive and Dan were now obscured from my line of sight. The wooden banister had caught and the stairs had vanished behind the blaze. My skin began prickling. I was trapped upstairs.
A voice rose above the roar. ‘Ellie! Ellie! The window! My bedroom window!’
At last my body launched into action. Coughing and sputtering, I stumbled backwards into the little room and slammed the door shut behind me. I turned and fled through it to Dan’s bedroom in the furthest reaches of the building. I was vaguely aware of the solid wood bed, the books on the bedside table, the diagrams of harps on the walls. I ran to the little hatch of a dormer window. I brushed the collection of pine cones off the sill and threw it open.
Fresh cold air poured in. Scarcely aware of what I was doing, I hoisted my legs over the sill. The edge pressed painfully through the thin fabric of my pyjamas. Below me was a slope of slate roof, coated in frost, gleaming under the stars. I perched there for a second. After the heat and glare, the dark iciness shocked my system. I could still hear sounds of wreckage from behind the closed door. Why oh why did I have to drop that candle? How could I have been so stupid? How was it possible this total devastation could happen so fast?
My limbs were shaking uncontrollably. I squeezed myself through the window frame and clambered out.
All at once everything was slithering downwards. My bare feet scudded around, knocking off frozen nodules of moss. My body writhed wildly, but I hung on. And then, finding some sort of balance, the world stilled again.
I breathed. My fingers didn’t dare loosen their hold on the window ledge so I lay there, dangling, arms stretched up, cheek flattened against the slates.
Wetness seeped through me, and the intense cold began to mingle with my body heat, gluing me to the roof. If I didn’t die from the fire, I would surely die of cold, or from losing my grip and falling. A sob rose from deep within me. I wasn’t ready to die.
Dan, Clive, the candle, the harps, the flames, my own dangling body … They were all spinning and morphing and becoming a blur. Then, suddenly, my brain short-circuited. I was flung back in time. I was in my bedroom, a mere ten years old, and I’d spilt red paint all over the carpet. My mother’s words came right through, as strident now as they were then. ‘Ellie, I despair of you. You always, always mess things up. Always.’
I didn’t know how to answer her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mouthed into the unforgiving air.
Then I heard another voice, a more welcome voice; Dan’s, winging up to me through the night.
‘Ellie! Ivy! To your left.’
I turned my head the other way and could just make out a tangled mass of something darker against the darkness. It was within reach. I pulled one hand away from the window ledge and moved my palm over the rough knots of ivy. It felt strong. I grasped it and transferred my weight slowly. The matted stems provided a foothold, then another. I lowered myself over the edge of the roof, knocking off icicles as I went, and arrived at a vertical drop of stone wall. Bit by bit, scrabbling and breaking my nails, I inched my way down the ropes of iv
y.
‘Ellie, you can jump now. I’m here!’
I trusted. I closed my eyes and jumped. Strong arms caught me. Strong arms held me. Tightly, oh so tightly. There was warmth and there was protection. There was a heart beating against my own heart.
‘Ellie, Ellie!’
I let out a wail of relief.
‘Are you all right?’ It was asked with fierce urgency.
‘Yes, I think so,’ I whispered.
The strong arms levered me gently to the ground and tucked me round with a soft padded jacket that smelled of pine wood.
I don’t know how long I lay there before I realized three things. First, the barn was still burning. Second, Dan was no longer with me. Third, where was Clive?
43
Dan
After I had made sure my Ellie was all right, I set about saving my harps. I didn’t stop to do any thinking. Thinking would have done them no good at all. Thinking uses up far too much time. Desire is quicker. I had one desire and that was enough to make me do what I had to do. This: go back into the barn and get the harps out of there. At once.
Grainy grey clouds were billowing out from the barn door and escaping up into the black sky. Inside everything was a-flicker. I launched myself back through the entrance. I was met with a blast of red and yellow fury, hot, violent, brutal. There was a hissing and a roaring in my face, a belching out of strong odours: scents of smoky pine, oak and beech wood mixed with the reek of hot oil, tar, wax and metal. Fiery tentacles were flailing about everywhere I looked. They wrapped around the drawers where I keep my harp strings. They slid along the surface of my workbench and snatched at my tools. They snaked their way up to the cork board. The photos of the harpists curled and blackened one by one, the face of Roe Deer among them. I jolted to a halt for a split second to watch. She was looking angrier and angrier as she disintegrated.
Above the roar I could hear clear drops of sound, notes of desperation and despair. The harps needed me. The harps. The poor harps. I pressed on.
I hoisted my Harbinger under my arm and carried it to the doorway. It felt heavy, almost as heavy as my heart. It clung to me, its ribs shuddering against my own. Once the two of us had got outside, there was a wild retching that came from me and a pinging sound that came from the harp as a string succumbed to the sudden temperature change. I stooped and laid the Harbinger on its side on the frozen track. It would survive. But there were so many more. Thirty-six more, including Ellie’s. But that was upstairs and I wasn’t sure how I could reach it.
I plunged back into the inferno that was my home. It was hard to see; sparks flew at my eyes and flames kept trying to dive down my throat and smoke thrashed and tingled in my nose. I ignored them. Something crashed to my right. Something bit into the flesh of my arm. Something spat in my face. There was a cascade of colour at the back of my eyes. Through the cackle and choke, I directed myself towards where I knew the harps were waiting for me. My outstretched arms banged into a familiar-shaped frame. The wood was red-hot, dry, thirsty. I couldn’t tell which harp it was, but it was a large one. I clutched it with blistering fingers and heaved it along with me, back to safety. I laid it on the ground in the darkness next to its companion. The stars shone down. Shadows twisted and leapt across the track from the rectangle of the doorway: amber, black, amber, black.
There were still thirty-five harps to save.
A third time I rushed in. A third time I fought through the brightness and the darkness and the blindness and the obliterating heat, and my hands found the curved neck of another harp. I pulled it out from the dazzle and into the chill of night. Laying it down, I touched the iced prickle of blades of grass and my body longed to collapse and lie there on the ground next to the three harps. All I wanted was to splutter the smoke out of my system and rest there in the cold quietness. But there were still thirty-four harps to save. I straightened up, dizzy, my lungs grasping at the air.
Then a shaft of white light fell across my shoulders. It was coming from two round centres, the headlamps of a car. The car door opened. Out of the side of the car came the figure of a man, the man who had sprung out of my armchair when the fire began. The man who had lumbered to the door while I was shouting to Ellie through the flames. Ellie’s husband Clive.
‘Fire brigade … I’ve called them. On their way!’ His words were slow and slurred, like great heavy blocks falling from his mouth. Didn’t he understand that nothing could be slow now? Harps were burning. Harps were needing help.
I propelled my clumsy limbs back into the barn. My skin bubbled. The air was full of so many things now it was almost impossible to force myself forward, but I stumbled into another harp. I grabbed it and lumped and bumped it over the floor and outside.
The car headlamps were still on, floodlighting the row of injured harps as they lay on the ground. And now another figure was tumbling towards me, barefoot, wearing my jacket over her pyjamas. Her hair was wild, her eyes wide. Ellie, the Exmoor Housewife.
I turned away from her and I pulled together all of my reluctant bones and joints and half-melted flesh and I ran back to the entrance of the barn.
‘Dan, stop!’
I did not stop. I had thirty-three harps to save.
Her shriek echoed behind me. ‘Clive! Please! Stop him!’
That was when I was bulldozed for a second time that night by her husband. His full weight knocked me down. I was dragged by my feet backwards, face down, through the sawdust, the dirt, the ash and the ice. I was weak. I could do no more.
44
Ellie
‘One drunk, one burned, one fainted …’
The voices ebb and flow. They seem far away, like spirits from a different world. I feel as if I’m hovering on the edge of that world, eavesdropping on someone else’s life. I pull back inwards and try to focus on myself.
I am lying on my back. But it isn’t in my bed at home – no, I’ve left all that behind, haven’t I, at Christmas, after a tearing-up of poems? But there’s been more destruction since then, I believe, or was it all a horribly vivid nightmare? Weren’t there flames? Flames threatening to eat up everything I loved?
I recognize the worn touch of my winter pyjamas. Didn’t I climb out of a window on to an icy roof? In these very pyjamas?
I listen. The voices are blending into a babble. There are background noises too, a siren warbling and an engine. I sense a steady movement. I open my eyes. I am in a confined space filled with medical equipment. There is a body lying beside me, wrapped in bandages.
‘How are you feeling?’
I must have fallen asleep, because when I open my eyes again a nurse is bending over me. She is the motherly type. Her blue tunic is pristine, her hair is looped neatly on top of her head, her smile is warm and comforting.
‘I’m fine now!’ I tell her, not that convincingly. It already feels like I’ve been awake for hours, but it must only be minutes. I don’t want any fuss. ‘I think it was just shock. I’m ready to go home now.’
The words just slipped out.
Home?
I sit up. The world spins then slowly settles. A band of sunlight is shining into the ward. There’s a background hum of machinery. People in white coats are coming and going.
The night’s events are seeping back into my consciousness now with hideous clarity. I remember what happened, but I can’t be sure of the end results.
‘Do you know anything about a man called Dan Hollis? He was with me, at the barn. He … I think he was hurt?’
‘Yes, dear,’ the nurse replies. ‘I thought you’d ask. He’s in the Burns Unit.’
My heart feels as if it is about to explode. ‘Will he be …?’ I gulp. My throat is so jammed up with dread I can’t finish the question. All I can do is look at her pleadingly.
‘He’ll be all right. The flesh on his arms and hands is damaged, but it’ll heal in time. Just some scarring.’
I could weep with relief.
‘Can I see him?’
‘Not
yet, dear. They’re still patching him up.’
I’m remembering more and more. I dropped a candle from the top of the stairs. A host of harps went up in flames. It must have been nearly all of them. Not to mention the workshop. Everything Dan loved and lived for, reduced to ashes. Because of me.
How the hell am I ever going to live with this?
And also …
Oh my God, Clive. Another tide of guilt sweeps through me. Clive trusted me and treasured me but I repaid him with nothing but wilfulness and deceit. Yet still he loved me enough to come to the barn to bring me back. And it was Clive who saved the day by calling the fire brigade after my stupid accident with the candle. After I’d nearly destroyed us all. He’s done more than that, too. In spite of his extreme jealous suspicions he threw himself forwards to drag Dan out of the flames. He saved Dan’s life.
Clive saved Dan’s life. Clive is a hero.
I have misjudged again, made a mess of everything again, just as my mother said I always did. I feel as though I am being pulled downwards, as though I am weighted with massive blocks of stone.
The nurse looks at me anxiously. ‘You’ve been through a lot. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’
‘Yes,’ I lie.
Clive must be at home now. He’ll be recovering from the shock too. If he still loves me he’ll come here soon, to pick me up and take me back with him.
Do I want to go home with him? Well, where else can I go? Perhaps Clive and I can sort things out together now. Perhaps things will be different between us. I close my eyes. I can’t bear to think of anything any more.