Ellie and the Harpmaker

by Hazel Prior

  “Sandwiches?” Dan offers.

  “Yes, please,” I reply eagerly, then start apologizing as I realize it wasn’t me he was talking to.

  A firm “No, thank you” comes from Rhoda, though. I guess that to retain a slim figure like hers she has to exercise strict self-discipline. Or maybe she’s just lucky. She is perfectly designed and sleekly finished. Her cleavage gapes so much I can’t stop looking at it, even though I’m not that way inclined. I notice Dan looking at it too. Alas, I can’t boast much in that department. And with my tatty jeans, bird’s-nest hair and poor posture, standing next to Rhoda is, I realize too late, a spectacularly bad idea.

  “So, Ellie, tell me about your musical experience,” she purrs, sliding manicured fingers through her silky waves of hair.

  “There isn’t any,” I answer glumly.

  “What, not at all?”

  I wilt. “Well, I sing about the house a bit and I’ve got quite a lot of CDs. I like listening to music.” It sounds so lame.

  Dan’s loitering at the bottom of the stairs. “Ellie is naturally musical,” he puts in. “Very. I know that because, even though she’s a beginner, I love listening when she plays.”

  When Dan gives a compliment I feel it much more than I do with other people. Perhaps because I know he never lies. I flush.

  “Well, I try! I do try hard, and I do love the harp.”

  Rhoda nods. “That’s a good start, then.”

  I’m aware of the sparkles in Dan’s eyes, but I daren’t look at him right now.

  “I’ll make you four sandwiches, Ellie. Brown wholemeal bread; triangular; cucumber and tuna mayonnaise. Will that be all right?”

  “Lovely!”

  He propels himself upstairs to the kitchen.

  Rhoda and I stand amid the throng of harps. I still feel it’s a massive privilege to be here, in this quiet, artistic, sweet-scented place, in their elegant company.

  Rhoda crosses her arms. “Which is yours?”

  “Oh, mine’s upstairs in Dan’s little room. I play it there. It’s one of the cherrywood ones.”

  “Cherrywood. Nice,” she comments, her voice conveying the strength of a superior knowledge. “They always have a lovely tone.”

  “Yes, it’s very special.”

  “Why don’t you take it home?”

  I’ll have to tell her. But how much? She seems to be assuming I’ve bought the harp. Dan can’t have told her it was actually a gift. I imagine it might cause friction between them if she knew. Would she kick up a fuss? Is she the jealous type? Now that she’s seen me, it’s hardly possible she can view me as a rival. Still, I wonder if she minds that I come to the Harp Barn so often and see so much of her boyfriend.

  “I’d love to take it home, of course, but I haven’t actually told my husband that I’m learning. The plan is to surprise him one day, when I’m really good.” This sounds reasonable. It at least bears some resemblance to the truth. Rhoda seems to accept it, anyway.

  “Well, it’s nice for Dan to have someone to share his sandwiches with,” she acknowledges.

  On cue, Dan comes down and presents me with four triangular sandwiches laid out in a star shape on a plate.

  Rhoda strolls about the barn examining the harps. I traipse after her, nibbling at the sandwiches, not sure what to say next.

  She turns to Dan. “Ah, you’ve finished the Elfin now.”

  “Yes! Last time you saw it there were no strings and no pebble. Now it has twenty-six strings and one pebble. It’s a good pebble, isn’t it, Roe Deer?”

  Or was it Roe, dear? Either way, it was uttered with affection. I pluck at my eyebrows nervously.

  She strokes the flat bluish pebble that is shining against the pale wood. “Yes, it goes well.”

  “The sound is good too, I think,” he replies. “Not loud, but quite resonant. Give it a go, Roe, and tell me what you think.”

  She leans over and plays it from above, without even bothering to get into the right position. The strings ring out under her fingers. The melody flows once through, clean and simple, then again with exquisite harmonies added. I catch my breath. This is real music.

  Seldom have I felt so envious. I need to keep reminding myself she’s been playing since she was a child. I can never expect to catch up.

  Dan is beaming. He must be horribly proud of her.

  Rhoda looks at me from under her luscious lashes. “So, Ellie, I have to rush off now, but we can arrange a lesson if you like. Don’t worry, I shan’t be offended if you don’t like,” she adds with a charming smile.

  I do my utmost to reflect some charm back at her. “I’d like it very much.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The jam is delicious, though I say so myself. Dan and I are both wolfing the sandwiches. I silently offer up thanks for Christina’s recipe.

  “Are your lessons with Roe Deer going well?” he asks.

  Well . . .

  Rhoda is a good teacher. We now have lessons in her house in Taunton. She has three harps of her own, so I play one of hers when I’m there. She’s shown me where I’ve been going wrong. I need to sit up straighter, relax my wrists more and bring my hands in closer to the harp. My elbows keep sinking; I must check that they don’t. I must pluck a little higher up on the strings. My fingers should be pinging back into my palms with every pluck. My nails should be a bit shorter. I need to practice triads, scales, rhythms and placing my fingers in advance.

  I ache to make music as Rhoda does, her fingers rippling over the strings so fast you can hardly see them. I have a long, long way to go.

  Do I like Rhoda? I’m not sure. She’s been kind and helpful, but I can’t quite warm to her, somehow.

  “I’m learning a lot,” I tell Dan.

  Rhoda doesn’t seem to visit Dan very often. He must be the one who visits her. He does have a battered old Land Rover out back, but I’ve always had the impression he doesn’t drive it very often.

  “Roe Deer is the best harpist I know,” he informs me.

  “Yes, but you would say that,” I point out grumpily. “She’s your girlfriend.”

  “Yes, I would say that. Because it’s true. She is the best harpist I know. And yes, you’re right; she is my girlfriend.”

  I’m not keen on the pride in his voice and not keen to talk about their relationship. I’d rather fish for compliments. “She says I have a good ear,” I boast.

  My ears are mostly covered by bushy hair, but I get the impression Dan is trying to examine them—without looking as though he’s examining them.

  “You have two, both of them good!” he replies at last.

  “Gee, thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  He pauses. “The thing about ears is they’re for listening. Yours are no exception. It would help your harp playing if you sometimes used them for that.”

  I am stung. “I do listen! I listen all the time!”

  Again, a small patch of silence. I feel my words hemmed in by doubt.

  With all her clever tips on technique, that’s one thing Rhoda has never told me—to listen. I used to listen when I first started, when I was messing about with the harp on my own, but perhaps not so much now. What with the hand positions and posture and trying to read the music correctly there are an awful lot of other things to use up my slim powers of concentration.

  I snatch up the last sandwich, cross with Dan for his astuteness.

  He stands up. “I’ll go and make coffee.”

  “You’re so mean! You always make coffee, but you never offer me any!” I moan with my mouth full.

  He laughs as if I’ve said something hilarious. “Oh, so you want to drink it?”

  Sometimes my patience wears thin. “Absolutely! That’s what it’s for, you know, coffee. For drinking.”

  “No, it isn’t. No
t at all,” he answers. And I see that in his world this is an incontrovertible truth.

  “What on earth do you use it for, then?”

  “Sniffing.”

  My annoyance gives way to incredulity. “So you don’t ever drink it?”

  “Nope. I make it, which is a thing I enjoy. I waft it around the room a bit, which is another thing I enjoy. I sniff it, which is a third thing I enjoy. Then I pour it down the sink.”

  “Dan! I’d assumed you were guzzling it all by yourself in the kitchen. But you’re throwing it away! That’s a crime! That’s such a waste!”

  “Why a crime? Why a waste? I don’t like the way it tastes. It tastes like woodworm. I like the way it smells. It smells like sunshine and harvest fields and hope. I’ve been making coffee for years and wafting it around and then pouring it down the sink. It’s a thing I do a lot.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Well, when I’m here, please don’t pour it down the sink anymore. Give it to me to pour down my throat!”

  “Oh. Oh. I wish you’d told me that’s what you wanted! I didn’t realize. Not at all. I’m supposed to realize that sort of thing, I know, but sometimes I don’t . . . see things that other people see . . .”

  “Dan, Dan, it’s fine! It doesn’t matter!” I put my hand out to him. He takes it briefly. Our eyes meet. In an instant my insides turn to mush.

  While he is making coffee I repeat the mantra over and over to myself. Clive is my rock. Clive is my rock. Clive is my rock.

  | 13 |

  Dan

  One of the not-so-good things about being the Exmoor Harpmaker is that Exmoor is a place with quite a few murderers wandering about. I pointed this out to Thomas when he brought my letters this morning.

  “What?” he said.

  I repeated my observation.

  Thomas replied that as far as he knew he did not know of any murderers in the locality and if I did then I should certainly inform the police about it pronto. I said in reply that Exmoor was certainly rife with murderers and at this time of year I saw them out and about everywhere. He said unless I explained myself quickly he would refuse to give me my letters and there was one from my sister Jo today that looked very interesting indeed. What murderers was I talking about, he wanted to know. I said the letter from my sister Jo was probably not in the least bit interesting, but, just to clarify, it was not people who were being murdered, it was birds.

  Oh, he said. I’d had him worried for a minute there. He supposed I was referring to the shooting season.

  I confirmed that indeed I was.

  He handed over my letters (junk mail and the letter from Jo, which, as I’d suspected, turned out to be a cheerful rant about this and that and an inquiry after my health) and said he respected my views, mate, but shooting pheasants hardly counted as murder. He didn’t reckon pheasants were so important in the great scheme of things. I asked him why not. He shrugged and said they were stupid creatures who made a big flap about nothing, always got in the way of his van and populated the roads whenever he was in a hurry, not quite moving to the shoulder in time but not quite consenting to get run over either. And although he didn’t really understand this shooting lark and it was all hooray henrys who did it anyway, nevertheless he did quite enjoy a pheasant when it was steeped in gravy and with a nice well-roasted spud on the side. He added that he might sometimes moan about his missus, but in all honesty, one thing in her favor was that she cooked a mean roast.

  (“Mean” means lots of things. It is a verb that tells you people are not being accurate in what they say; they are hiding all sorts of extra things under the words. For example, when Roe Deer calls me a lemon, what does she mean? She does not mean I am a yellow citrus fruit. Not at all. At least, I hope not. “Mean” is also a noun that describes a sort of average, which is a number divided by another number. For example, the mean number of sandwiches I eat in a day is the total number I eat in a month divided by the number of days in the month. “Mean” is also an adjective that indicates a lack of generosity. For example, Ellie said I was being mean when I didn’t give her any coffee and I poured it down the sink instead. This was not a compliment. But when Thomas uses it, especially before a food or drink word, “mean” is a huge compliment. “This is a mean cider,” is something he says at the Stag’s Head very often indeed.)

  Anyway, I observed, I did not like the bang of guns. Not at all. I also did not like finding bits of lead shot lying about the countryside. Lead is a poisonous substance that does not do the countryside any good whatsoever. Neither, I told him, did I like the fact that these poor birds are bred and fattened up and then let loose in the wild purely for the purpose of providing sport for the—

  “—the hooray henrys,” Thomas supplied.

  If the hooray henrys were very hungry indeed, I said, and were prepared to do all the other bits involved—the rearing, feeding and tending, then later the plucking, stuffing, cooking, steeping in gravy and putting of spuds on the side—then that would be more excusable. But it didn’t work like that. Also I did not like the way the hooray henrys paid local lads a pittance to beat the birds out of the bushes and into the path of the gunfire to make it easy for themselves. To me that seemed mean (not like Thomas’s cider; like Ellie’s coffee) and unsportsmanlike. In fact, it was by far the most unsporting sport I could think of.

  Thomas said that I had a point, but he still thought they were silly birds and he still liked them on a plate with gravy and spuds.

  * * *

  • • •

  Roe Deer arrived at nine forty-five this morning, fifteen minutes before Ellie’s lesson. She was wearing a purple skirt, very short, and black boots, very long. Her hair was loose but had a single plait plaited into it over her right ear. In and out of the plait was wound a slender purple ribbon, same color as her skirt. When she came in she placed a kiss on my cheek and put her head a little to one side. This is what she said: “Dan, I think I’ve got a commission for you.”

  I asked her why she thought that.

  “Well, the husband of one of my harp students rang me out of the blue. The lady is very keen on learning, but she doesn’t have a harp of her own. Anyway, this guy wants to give her a harp for Christmas.”

  I said that sounded like a nice Christmas present to me.

  “Yes, Dan, but the point is, he wants a handmade one.”

  She seemed to be waiting for a response, so I said, “Oh.”

  She tossed her hair (including the plait) over her shoulder. “I recommended you, of course. I told him to look at your website, and he’s done that. But he says he wants you to make a particular one, one specially for her, out of some wood he’s got.”

  I asked what kind of wood.

  “Apple,” she said. “It has some special significance for them. I think he said it’s from a tree that was in her grandmother’s orchard. Something like that, anyway. And he wants you to carve her name in it as well. I warned him you have your own ideas and might not like that, but he was quite insistent. Seems a stubborn type. Maybe even more stubborn than you!” She laughed. Her laugh came out in a quick puff of air into my face. Her breath was minty.

  I asked if the apple wood had been seasoned, as apple wood has a high shrinkage rate. It doesn’t do to be in too much of a hurry when you make an apple wood harp. She shrugged. “You’d better get in touch with him yourself,” is what she said. Roe Deer does not like answering questions. In any case there was not time for me to ask any more of them because that was the moment Ellie knocked at the door. I went and opened it.

  * * *

  • • •

  It is nice to hear music as I work. Scales, arpeggios, snatches of tunes played first fast (Roe Deer) and then very slowly and repeated lots of times (Ellie). I like both types of sound. I hum along a bit.

  I am doing my quiet jobs today. Washing pebbles, sweeping up sawdust, sorting strings, a little gen
tle sandpapering, gluing and clamping.

  Roe Deer did not bring any of her three harps so I have lent her the thirty-six-string sycamore Harbinger for teaching purposes. Good for them to have a harp each. Teacher’s harp, student’s harp. Sycamore harp, cherry harp. Girlfriend harp, Housewife harp. It is all most satisfying.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was the third Saturday in October that it happened. I had been watching the ants. The weather was coolish and grayish, and they were not scurrying around with their usual frantic dedication. They were slow, extra slow; positively plodding. I had on my anorak, padded, so I was not too cold. I sat on a cushion of moss nearly at the top of the oak woods and I watched them for sixteen minutes. I counted two hundred and twenty-three ants in that time, but it’s possible I counted some twice. We should allow a margin of twelve ants either way.

  After ant-counting activities I headed on toward the open land. The sky was purply and seemed to be doing its best to hang on to the water droplets that made up the great gray clouds. The wind was gusting once I’d come out of the shelter of the trees. I headed northward until I reached the crest of the hill and could see the sea. It had a raked look about it and was an odd greenish brown. I carefully selected today’s stone and placed it on top of the cairn. Not many sounds. The wind in the trees. The distant whinnying of a pony.

  Then suddenly there was a crashing in the bushes to my right. I knew what it was straightaway. It was the sound of the beaters. Almost simultaneously the air was rent with a cacophony of gunshots. I crouched down and put my hands over my ears to try and block out the noise, but it burst through my hands and into my eardrums and into the center of my head. It felt as if it had split open my skull. It cudgeled my brain. I just wanted it to stop.

  I closed my eyes. I opened them again. There, in front of me, was a streak of color: brown, red, green and white. It was flapping madly across the moor. Wings arched, eyes wide in terror, desperately seeking cover. It was right out in the open, with nowhere safe to go. For a moment I was rooted to the spot, then I catapulted myself toward it.