by Hazel Prior
“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 practices, 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 but 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 favor?”
“Yes, of course, 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. Honorable. 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 Donkey Sanctuary or Lost Panda’s 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 Meow. “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.
“Have your birch trees grown yet?” she asks.
“No, of course not! They take time to germinate. But Dan and I do go and look at them most days just in case. That is, we go and look at the seed trays and the compost and we hope that the seeds are OK. And we keep them well watered.”
“We, we, we!” she chants. “Dan and I this, Dan and I that!”
“Christina, stop it!”
“OK, OK! Untwist your knickers! I’ve stopped. So you want me to lie to Clive. So I’ve cut my hand on a can opener, have I?”
“Yes, you slashed it really badly. Just in case he ever answers the phone and asks how you are.”
“Can I elaborate? Say I got gangrene and nearly had to have an amputation—”
“No!”
“Spoilsport!”
“This is serious. I’m relying on you,” I tell her.
“Calm down, Ellie! Clive won’t suspect anything. What sort of can was it?”
“I don’t know. Baked beans?”
“No, let’s go for chickpeas. More realistic.”
“Chickpeas it is, then! And Christina, something else. You find it really difficult to manage shopping bags and stuff like that. So I have to come and visit you and help out with things every day, OK? Saturdays and Sundays included.”
“Right you are. It’ll be nice to see you.”
“But actually I’ll be at the Harp Barn, helping Dan.”
“Message received and understood. It would be nice to really see you sometime, though.”
Christina can put on a good act, but I sense a bout of depression looming. I gather Alex has stopped coming home every weekend and when he does his treasured visits are mostly used up in phone calls to his new girlfriend rather than quality time with his mother.
“We’ll get together soon, I promise. So sorry to put you in this position. Sorry about everything. And, Christina—thanks for being such a star.”
When I replace the receiver I feel urgently in need of fresh air. I scramble into my jacket and pound along the road. At the far end I veer off onto a footpath that leads steeply up the fields alongside the wood. A strong wind is buffeting the trees and scooping leaves up from the ground. I can’t take my eyes off those frantic leaves. They’re scurrying like gnats, spinning wild patterns with every gust.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!
I just can’t shake those lines out of my head.
I’m kicking myself. Why didn’t I just tell Clive how much I wanted the harp in the first place? Now everything’s escalated and I can’t see a way out. The two most important things in my life—my husband and my visits to the barn—are clashing. Clashing like different tunes played in different keys at the same time.
Clive is my rock. Clive is my rock.
I must hang on to that. It’s true, so true. I don’t know how I’d manage without Clive. The other day when he came home from work he saw at once that I’d been crying, even though I’d washed my face four times.
“Ellie, hon-bun, what’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“Clearly it isn’t. Hon, tell me what’s the problem. I’ll try my best to fix it, whatever it takes.”
“It’s just—Mum again. I phoned her today and she didn’t know who I was. Not for ages. Then, when she finally clicked that it was me, she said, ‘Ellie? Oh, Ellie!’ in such a scornful way. Then she muttered, ‘Useless!’ I know I shouldn’t let it get to me, but it did.”
Clive held me tight. I breath
ed in the comforting bergamot and leather tones of his aftershave.
“C’mon, El. Your mother has no idea what she’s saying. You know that. The ‘useless’ was probably referring to something else altogether.”
“It wasn’t.” I sniffed. “She’s always thought I was useless.”
“Well, she’s always been wrong.”
Once I’d recovered he went out again, even though he must have been exhausted from his day’s work. He returned three-quarters of an hour later with a spray of chrysanthemums and a beautiful little pair of silver earrings for me, “Just because.” Then he lit the fire, made me sit by it and massaged my feet. We ended up making love on the hearth rug, the firelight glowing on our naked skin. How precious it is to be loved.
I don’t deserve Clive.
Yet the harp playing is crazily vital to me. It isn’t just the dreams-coming-true thing, or even my strange bond with Dan. I’ve made an astonishing discovery: I can make music. It’s like a rich seam of gold inside myself that I never knew was there before. If—when—I tell him, Clive is going to resent the fact that he has nothing to do with this new seam. He’ll take it personally, see it as an act of rebellion. He may even try to make me stop.
I can’t stop now. I won’t stop now.
* * *
• • •
Dan submits to my peeling off his dressings, cleaning the wound and rebandaging him without complaint every day. Torn flesh, seeping blood and puss—not something I’d normally relish. In this case, though, I don’t mind at all. It feels deliciously intimate. I’m flattered that Dan puts his trust in me, even while he winces with pain. He’s not as patient as I would have expected, though. He’s in a hurry to get better. I suppose he’s missing his daily walk.
It’s just as well Dan has Phineas for company. He seems to have bonded with that bird in an extraordinary way. Phineas sleeps in the barn every night. He comes and goes through his new pheasant flap. Great big bird though he is, he even leaps onto Dan’s knee at times, when Dan is resting on one of the wooden chairs. Dan wraps his arms around him, talks to him and strokes his feathers. It’s a surreal sight, the two of them cuddling up together so tenderly, surrounded by harps.
It struck me that Dan might be interested in Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Puzzled Game-Birds,” so I took a copy up with me and read it out to him last time I was there:
They are not those who used to feed us
When we were young—they cannot be—
These shapes that now bereave and bleed us?
Dan nodded sagely. “That’s the thing exactly! Those are the exact words Phineas would say to the hooray henrys if he could speak—and if they would stop shooting for a moment and listen.”
He petted Phineas on the head and Phineas nestled into him, smiling as much as a bird can smile.
Later, after I’d finished my harp practice, I watched from the window as Dan hobbled around the orchard on his crutches. He gazed up at the trees and the golden smudges of clouds, and heaved a great sigh. Doubtless he was missing Rhoda. I sighed too.
* * *
• • •
“How do you feel about Dan’s new pet?” I asked Rhoda during our last lesson at her house in Taunton.
“Oh, that!” She laughed in a way I didn’t quite like. “Yes, he told me about the pheasant.”
“So you haven’t met Phineas yet?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Nor do I want to, particularly. I’m not megakeen on birds.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t even seen him, though,” I said. “Phineas is hard to miss. He virtually lives in the barn.”
She flicked a lever on her harp. “Well, I don’t get out there that much.”
Hadn’t she even been to visit Dan since his accident? I knew for a fact that he couldn’t drive at the moment, so it was up to her if she wanted to see him. Surely she’d want to check he was all right? Comfort him, bring him treats?
I looked at her curiously. She continued fiddling with harp levers, her lips pressed tightly together.
I wanted to slap her. However unbelievably good-looking and talented she is, she shouldn’t take Dan for granted.
“Dan’s still really suffering with his leg, isn’t he?” I said. “It’s a horrible injury.”
“Well, if he must run out in front of guns, what does he expect?”
| 17 |
Dan
I juggle with two crutches, a bag of birdseed and a harp. It is important to carry all these at the same time. Into the orchard, whatever the weather, four times a day. I am getting quite good at it. Sometimes I also manage to bring a peanut butter sandwich, as a special treat for Phineas. I’ve discovered he has a penchant for them.
Phineas and I have become firm friends. I don’t speak his language and he doesn’t speak mine, but we’ve worked out a very satisfactory means of communication. When it’s time for his meals I use the smallest lap harp (the Lapwing) and I play a chord. For breakfast I play a B-flat major, for lunch I play an F minor, for tea I play a C7 and for evening snack I play a G arpeggio. Phineas knows exactly what they all mean. He comes running each time, bounding across the grass with his wing (the uninjured one) unfurled and his beak open in a great flurry of excitement. He likes the harp so much I am beginning to wish I could play it properly. But I have never learned to play because making harps takes all my time and energy. Perhaps I could get Ellie to play for him sometimes, as she’s here so much. She’s quite good on the harp now. When concentrating on technique she stops and starts a lot, but when she knows a piece well she pours expression and feeling into each note. She and the cherrywood harp are as one. Through it, she sings. I love it when this happens. I think Phineas must love it too. I feel he is a musical bird. Hugely brainy, no; musical, yes.
Ellie and I could be like a mother and father to Phineas. Except that we’ll never tell him what he’s supposed to and supposed not to do. Phineas is a free agent and if he wants to flap his wings and make strange noises that’s fine by me.
Phineas is also welcome to poo in the woodshed if that’s what makes him happy. Washing pheasant poo off my carefully seasoned harp wood is no chore. In fact, I find it quite soothing.
I think I will name my next harp the Phineas. He can select which wood it is made from in his own inimitable manner.
* * *
• • •
Roe Deer rang this morning, just after I’d given Phineas breakfast. “Dan,” she said.
“Roe Deer,” I said.
“Are you any better?”
“Better in what sense?” I asked.
“Your leg, you lemon!”
I told her my leg was much improved and called her a banana. Two can play at that game.
She gave a huffy sound down the phone. “Are you up to making harps?”
I said of course I was.
“Good, glad to hear it,” she said. “Dan, you haven’t phoned Mike Thornton yet, have you?”
I confirmed that I hadn’t.
“Dan, I try to help you, but honestly! He is really, really keen for you to make a harp for his wife, for Christmas, but you do actually have to ring him and talk about it.”
I am not good at phone conversations with anyone, let alone people I’ve never met. I pointed this out to Roe Deer, even though I would have thought she knows it already.
“Yes, but Dan, Dan, Dan,” she said. She does that repetition-of-my-name thing sometimes. “You have to make an effort. I was the one who recommended you, so it’ll reflect badly on me otherwise. And unless you get on with it soon, Christmas will be over and my student still won’t have her harp.”
I can be pretty quick making harps if need be. Still, perhaps she had a point. So I promised I would ring the man straightaway, without further ado.
“Hang on a mo!” she said before I could put the phone down. “Have you actually go
t his number?”
I reminded her that indeed I did. She had told it to me when she first mentioned the subject. “I suppose you remember it still after all these weeks, do you? Tell me what it is.”
I told her. She laughed and said I was dead right. She said I was superefficient in some ways and completely hopeless in others. She said to be sure and ring him straightaway. So that is what I did.
Mike Thornton wants me to make a harp for his wife Fifi out of an old apple tree that was cut down three years ago and is now sitting in chunks in a shed near Bridgwater. That is fine. What is not so fine is that he wants me to carve the word “Fifi” on the side of the harp. I informed him that this was not a good sort of a name to carve onto a harp. He said what did I mean? I said it was not a musical and mellifluous name, not a name suited to harps. He said in a much louder voice that he considered it to be a very musical and nice name, it was his wife’s name, and if I took that tone with him he would take his business elsewhere. I told him it was up to him to take it where he liked. I was about to put down the phone when he said well, perhaps I could make the harp first and then after that we could talk about the issue of the name. There was no hurry to decide. But there was a hurry to get a harp made out of the apple wood by Christmas. I said all right, I could get a harp made out of the apple wood by Christmas. But in order to do this I would need the apple wood. My leg was not yet OK to drive; otherwise, I would drive in my Land Rover to collect the apple wood from his shed near Bridgwater the following day. He asked what was wrong with my leg, so I told him a hooray henry had shot it. He said was I joking? I said no, I wasn’t. He said well, that was damned inconvenient. There was a gap in the conversation, so I waited for him to fill it. At last he did that and he did it in a voice that sounded as if he was trying to swallow a hedgehog, and what he said was this: “I suppose that means I have no choice, I am going to have to bring the wood over to your workshop . . . ?”