Ellie and The Harp-Maker

by Hazel Prior

  ‘Mrs Jacobs, the doctor’s here to see you!’

  I take a deep breath and try to look a picture of health. The doctor, a short, stumpy, earnest sort of man, peers at me through his glasses and asks the standard questions. Aside from a few bruises I am fine, it transpires, and am free to go.

  I wonder exactly how I’m supposed to do that, with no car, no money and no clothes apart from pyjamas and Dan’s jacket.

  ‘Have you got anyone who can pick you up?’ the doctor asks.

  Yes, but only one person. He must know I’m here. He must come soon.

  I wait for my husband at reception. I wait two hours. During this time I repeatedly ask the woman behind the desk if I can go and see Dan. But he is still in recovery and they won’t allow visitors.

  I think about ringing Clive. But I want it to be him who makes the effort, him who strives towards a reconciliation.

  Is that what I want? Is it?

  45

  Dan

  ‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’

  My sister’s voice is frosty but I observe quivery little drips of water hanging from her eyes. She brushes them away and furrows up her brow. She is perched on the edge of the hospital bed, where I’m propped against the pillows. A bunch of grapes is on her lap, purple ones, large, in a plastic bag. She pushes the bag towards me.

  I don’t take one because it is painful to move. Everything is painful. I am bandaged in lots of places.

  She selects a grape and puts it in her mouth. She chews it. I wonder when she’s going to spit out the pips, but she never does. I surmise they must be seedless grapes.

  She repeats her question.

  I inform her that what I was doing was saving Ellie from the fire. After that I was saving harps from the fire. I managed to save four harps. It wasn’t as many as I’d wanted to save though, because after that Ellie’s husband had taken it upon himself to save me.

  ‘Ellie’s husband? What the blue blazes was he doing there?’

  I look down. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for her to know this information. Not at all. She repeats her second question, however, and I know she’ll keep on repeating it until I answer, so I tell her.

  ‘Here it is then,’ is what I say. ‘Ellie’s husband was in the workshop last night because he had a plan. His plan was this: to set fire to the Harp Barn.’

  She gapes. ‘But I thought it was an accident?’

  I tell her that it both was and wasn’t.

  ‘Please, Dan! Start at the beginning. Tell me everything.’

  So I do. I tell her how Ellie had asked me to move her car, which I had done, and how I’d come back from Thomas’s to the smell of paraffin and the loud cawing of Phineas. How I’d found Ellie’s husband Clive in the woodshed and how he’d attacked me. How, after he had been hit twice (not by me, I hastened to add; first by a pile of logs and then by the floor), he had proffered me the box of matches. How he lay there for a long while.

  ‘It was a problem,’ I tell Jo, remembering. ‘I had no idea at all what I was supposed to do. To be honest, I don’t think he knew what he was supposed to do either. Which surprised me as he’d struck me as the sort of person who always knows these things. Maybe I got that wrong. I took the matches away from him anyway. And I said he’d better come inside out of the cold.’

  ‘You invited him in!’

  ‘He was hurting quite badly and had had enough of fighting. So come in is what he did. There wasn’t much else he could do at this point apart from freeze to death.’

  But after he came in, Ellie’s husband Clive had acted most strangely. He had sat in a chair and laughed. He’d told me he knew. He knew all about Ellie and me. Even if she wasn’t here now, Ellie had been here, he’d seen her, he’d seen the look on her face. But really he’d known for months. Ellie had changed, she’d been drifting away from him bit by bit and it tore him apart and there was nothing he could do about it. And it was all because of me and my romantic sodding beautiful bloody harps.

  That was the thought that drove him to it. That filled his head with images. Images of romantic sodding beautiful bloody harps on fire. He’d been thinking of burning harps for weeks on end, he said. He said it in a trance-like sort of way, and to be honest I wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or to me, but I listened just in case. He might have been a bit confused because of the bang on the head he’d received from the floor of the woodshed. I can’t be sure. Anyway, he went on and on about the burning harps. He said that image had a strange appeal, and the appeal had been growing stronger and stronger every day. All those harps, he said; Ellie probably considered my barn to be like heaven, with all the harps, but he saw it more as hell. At least, he could turn it into hell, with the help of a box of matches. A neat exchange of extremes. He laughed again when he said that. I did not like the fact he laughed at such a thing.

  After he’d seen with his own eyes that Ellie was at the barn, he’d gone home and steeled himself with whisky. Then he’d soaked rags in paraffin and put them in a bucket, in readiness. He was prepared to wait, but when he came back to the barn he saw that Ellie’s car was already gone. He assumed she’d taken fright and whisked me away somewhere, perhaps up north to her sister’s. He thought me and Ellie deserved a big surprise when we got back. So he stuffed the rags in all the crevices around the barn and got out the matches.

  When he told me this I went round the barn to see if it was true, and it was. I collected up the rags. There were a lot. Some of them looked like Ellie’s clothes. The cherry-coloured socks and her moss-coloured cardigan and her terracotta T-shirt. They were very paraffiny and they were everywhere, under the windows, in the letter box and there was one – it looked like her russet-coloured jumper – that was beside Phineas’s pheasant flap. In fact, Ellie’s husband Clive had (he told me) just stooped down to stuff the jumper into the flap prior to lighting a match when Phineas came out of the flap. Phineas is not viciously inclined, but Phineas got a nasty shock when he tried to go out for a midnight stroll and found a man stuffing a paraffin-soaked jumper into his pheasant flap. So bad was the shock of his discovery that he flew into the face of the man.

  I pause. ‘I would say it was self-defence, wouldn’t you?’

  Jo doesn’t answer. She has stopped chewing grapes and is staring at me.

  ‘It was not only a shock for Phineas,’ I tell her. ‘It was also a big shock for Ellie’s husband – to have a whirling pheasant in his face just when he was about to set fire to her clothes and the barn and the harps.’

  Jo continues to gape.

  ‘In fact, the shock was so big that, rather than setting fire to anything, he went and sat in my woodshed instead. Which is where I’d found him. And where he’d attacked me.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus!’ Jo mutters under her breath.

  I go on with my narration. ‘After I’d learned this about Ellie’s husband and his intentions I felt alarmed. I started talking and I told him all about what I was thinking. Which is what I am still thinking. Which is this: that Clive is slightly not quite normal in the head.’

  ‘Slightly! The man’s a psychopath!’ cries Jo.

  I inform her that Clive the Psychopath still didn’t know at this point that Ellie was actually lying in my bed, feeling queasy. But then Ellie came out of my bedroom and saw him. And she was as surprised as he was and so dropped her candle from the banister. And the candle had landed slap bang in the middle of the heap of paraffiny clothes that I’d been gathering. Which was a dreadfully unlucky thing and one that had almost cost all our lives.

  I am tired with all the talking now and sink back on to the pillows.

  Jo’s eyes are smouldering and she looks as though she is about to snort a great burst of fire from her nostrils, like a dragon. ‘God in heaven! That Ellie has a lot to answer for! And I thought Rhoda was bad!’

  46

  Ellie

  Only a sister would offer to drive three hundred miles for such a cause, when she has a child ill in
bed and three others clamouring for her attention.

  ‘But I’m afraid I’ll have to drive us straight from the hospital back up to Yorkshire,’ Vic says, and I hear down the line how much her voice is sagging. ‘I’d suggest a B and B but Alan is back at work tomorrow and I won’t be able to get a babysitter at such short notice.’

  Six hundred miles then. It’s asking a lot, even of a sister.

  If only Christina was here!

  I cudgel my brain for other possibilities. Then I tell Vic to stay where she is. There’s a phone directory in the booth. I shuffle through the pages. The number is listed.

  The phone rings on and on. I’m about to give up when I hear a click and a voice greets me in a sing-song Welsh accent. Thank goodness! I was afraid he’d be out at work, but now I remember it’s a Sunday.

  ‘Hi, Thomas, it’s Ellie Jacobs.’

  ‘Ellie Jacobs! Hello, Ellie Jacobs. What a pleasure, indeed! What can I do you for?’

  He knows nothing of last night’s events, apart from the fact that Dan left my car at his house. I break the news as gently as I can. Thomas bombards me with colourful expletives as I struggle through my description of the fire.

  ‘So our boyo Dan? He’s all right, is he now?’

  I assure him that Dan is reasonably all right, here in hospital too but still being ‘patched up’.

  I explain my current problem and ask about my car.

  ‘Yes, it’s still here next to the van,’ Thomas tells me. And yes, Thomas, bless him, is happy to come and pick me up and take me to it. He is also sure – or pretty much sure – his wife won’t mind if I borrow some of her clothes.

  The drive to Yorkshire is longer than ever. I’m still feeling extremely delicate. And uncomfortable, and itchy. Thomas’s wife’s skirt is an awful creation, a tubular thing in puce nylon that’s three sizes too big for me. The jumper is grotesque too, with flouncy sleeves and a pattern of enormous turquoise and pink roses. I’ll return them both to their kind owner at the first possible opportunity. My outfit is the least of my worries but I’ve improved it as best I can with Dan’s brown jacket. The jacket smells horribly of smoke, but behind that is the scent of pine wood and behind that, possibly, the scent of Dan himself. The scent of a kind, brave, harp-making man.

  The vision of burning harps haunts me throughout the journey. My driving is erratic, disturbed by memories: the smell, the heat, the sound of roaring flames and breaking strings. Dan will be haunted too, lying in his hospital bed, groaning in pain. Cursing the day he met me.

  I only pray he recovers quickly and finds some way of carrying on. Thomas promised he would go and visit as soon as visits were allowed. I wish I could be closer. I’ll try ringing the hospital once I arrive at Vic’s.

  As for my own future, I just don’t know. Logic suggests I should go back to Clive if he’ll have me. If he had come to collect me from the hospital I’d have gone home to him again like a lamb. After all, he saved Dan’s life after my clumsiness with the candle nearly killed him, and how can I ever forget that? Yet I shrink away from the idea of life with Clive again. Perhaps it’s because I’ve got into the habit of living off dreams. Reality seems a hell of a lot less attractive.

  I stop off three times, fill the tank with petrol and drink awful coffees at crowded service stations. At one of them I spot a man heading into the car park and I’m sure it’s Clive. I can only see his back view but his height and the sandy colour of his hair … Could it be that he has followed me, that he is even now planning to take me home? Then he turns and I see that it isn’t him at all. I start breathing again.

  With a throbbing head and stinging eyes I finally reach the close of red-brick houses where Vic lives, and pull up in the driveway. Her children are playing in the garden. They flock round the car and drag me into the house with small, sticky hands.

  ‘Auntie Ellie’s here! Auntie Ellie’s here!’

  I manage a smile.

  Vic runs to meet me, her auburn hair streaming behind her, face flushed, arms open. ‘You’re in for a noisy time I’m afraid!’ she cries as she envelops me in a hug. I was cryptic on the phone, but she knows I’ve been through something and she knows it’s big.

  ‘But how …’ I stammer ‘… It can’t be true!’

  I clamp the receiver to my ear, wondering if it’s possible I’ve misheard. But I know I haven’t.

  Jo’s voice is terse. ‘I don’t think Dan would lie about such a thing! Do you?’

  I stare at the six pairs of boots in Vic’s hallway as if they can provide the proof I need. I’d rung Jo hoping for news of Dan. But instead she’d assaulted me with a hideous, horrifying revelation. I’d assumed the fire had been all my fault, which was bad enough, but this! My husband, a criminal. My husband, an arsonist.

  ‘I just … I can’t comprehend how Clive could have wanted to do such a thing.’

  Could he really, really have meant to strike that match? I recall the tang I smelled on his breath the last time we were at home together. I picture all the empty whisky bottles. The effects of alcohol on an overstrained mind …

  ‘I don’t get it either,’ Jo grunts. ‘What did Dan ever do to him? If – and nobody ever hinted this was the case until now – your reason for leaving your husband was to be with my brother then that was your call and your choice. But it’s Dan who’s lost his livelihood and ended up in horrible pain in hospital. While you skip off to the comfort of your sister’s in Yorkshire.’

  ‘Jo, I—’

  ‘How could your husband even think of it?’ She’s getting worked up now. Her voice is screechy. ‘What kind of a person is he to go to such extremes? What did you do to make him so jealous, so violent? Were you sleeping with my brother?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Well, clearly something was going on. And now you know the consequences of your actions. I hope you’re happy.’

  She slams the phone down. I don’t blame her one bit for her anger. I stand shaking in the hall, trying to take in this new slant on things. The vision of the burning barn is alive again in my head. It’s so terrifying I can’t bear to think of anyone deliberately planning it, let alone my own husband.

  Clive, Clive – how is this possible? Over the last few hours I’ve been telling myself he’s a hero. I was even contemplating going back to him. But now the message is thundering home: how much heroism did it actually take to make a 999 call and to drag an exhausted Dan back from the barn? More to the point, how much malice did it take to plan an act of destruction like the one I’d witnessed? Malice and sheer venomous evil.

  The world is turning on its head. I think back. Everything is coming into sharper focus. Clive isn’t the one who called to me through the flames or guided me down the roof and caught me when I jumped. Or the one who dashed back into the furnace to save the harps. It isn’t Clive who is the hero.

  Everything now homes in on Dan, the kindest, bravest, truest man I know. What horror I have brought into his life. How can he ever forgive me? How can I possibly overcome the bitter regret that is clawing inside me?

  47

  Dan

  My first visitor in hospital was my sister Jo. My second visitor was Thomas. He was wearing a cagoule over his shorts, electric blue. The fringe of his hair was on a jagged slant and pressed flat against his forehead. I guessed he had let his wife Linda give him a haircut again and not liked it again and tried to improve it himself with a pair of nail scissors again. This happens often with Thomas.

  Thomas sat in the chair by the bed and expressed his deep concern for my well-being and asked if I was doing all right. I informed him that according to the doctors I was doing miraculously well. He slapped me on the back.

  ‘Ouch,’ I said because my back was tender. Not as badly burned as my arms and hands, but still not good.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said.

  We sat in silence for a while. I thought about my harps. Thirty-two had been burned. I had managed to save four, and by good fortune Ellie’s harp had also surviv
ed. The fire brigade had put out the flames before they reached the upstairs room. But thirty-two was a lot of harps to lose.

  Thomas said, ‘I gave Ellie J a lift from hospital. She drove off up to Yorkshire. Just in case you wanted to know where she is, boyo.’

  (I already knew where she was in fact because Jo had told me. I had asked lots of questions about Ellie when I found out Ellie had been on the phone to Jo but Jo had said don’t you go worrying about Ellie; Ellie’s not the one who got severe burns and lost thirty-two harps and her whole livelihood, is she?)

  After another pause Thomas said: ‘I presume you’re insured, mate?’

  I didn’t answer immediately, so he said it again, in different words: ‘You took out buildings and contents insurance for the barn, didn’t you, boyo?’

  Buildings and contents insurance is when you give more money than you can possibly afford to a company made up of people you have never met and in exchange they ask you to fill in a lot of forms packed with questions to which you don’t know the answers.

  I said no.

  ‘That’s not good, boyo,’ Thomas said. Then he said: ‘Where are you going to live? How are you going to survive?’

  To which I answered that I hadn’t the faintest idea.

  48

  Ellie

  ‘He could be charming in his way, but I have to admit I always thought you were far too good for him.’

  ‘Good?’ The word makes no sense.

  Vic reaches out and strokes my arm. ‘I never particularly warmed to Clive, Ellie, but I never dreamed he could do anything like this! Whisky or no whisky!’

  It is late. We are at the kitchen table, with wine. I take a sip from my glass. I need it badly. Telling Vic seems to make what happened even more real. Her husband wanders in.