Ellie and the Harpmaker

by Hazel Prior

  I said I supposed so too.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Hi, Dan, what’s up?” Ellie said the next time she came. Her cheeks were pink and her hair was windswept. She was wearing her blue scarf. One of the tassels had got loose and tangly.

  “Is something up?” I asked her.

  “Well, yes, presumably. You look traumatized. And your hands are twitching.”

  I said that was maybe the look that I wore and the twitch that I twitched when I had just met a stranger and the stranger was called Mike Thornton and Mike Thornton had come to the barn with a load of apple wood and Mike Thornton wanted me to make that wood into a harp by Christmas and Mike Thornton also wanted me to carve the word “Fifi” into the harp and Mike Thornton was being pushy. I did not mind the apple wood, but I did mind Mike Thornton.

  “Dan, you should get out more,” is what Ellie then said to me.

  I replied that it’s difficult to get out with my leg bandaged up, but I will certainly get back onto my daily walk as soon as I can.

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” she said. She sat on the bottom step of the seventeen steps that lead to the upstairs of the Harp Barn. I came and sat next to her. It took some time to do this because my leg didn’t like it, and it would take even longer to get up again because my leg would like it even less, but it was what I wanted to do so I did it. Ellie budged up to make room for me, but we were still close, very. We sat for a long while without speaking. Then the closeness began converting itself into a hotness and a trembliness, so I asked quickly what she’d meant when she said I should get out more.

  “What I mean, Dan, is that maybe you need a bit more variety in your life.”

  I informed her that my walk gives me all the variety I need. Even though it is always the same walk, it is always different. How the trees and the bracken are always changing. How the sunshine, shrinking behind a cloud, suddenly mutes the colors, but then it sails out and sets them ablaze again. How I like it especially in autumn when the leaves are all painted in copper and bronze and scarlet and ocher and rust. Even if I limit myself to looking down at the path, there are different worlds to explore. Sometimes a pattern of pebbles, sometimes a procession of ants, sometimes a chip of eggshell from a tiny egg, sometimes a shiny green beetle, the skeleton of a leaf, a slip of silver water snaking through the stones.

  “Dan Hollis!” she cried, and her eyes were bright with a brightness that made me want to dive into them. “There is so much poetry in you.”

  I was pleased when she said this.

  But after that she said: “Still, it’s good to go to lots of different places and see lots of different people. You can’t really expand your horizons on just that one walk every day. You hardly see anyone except for Thomas the postman and me . . . and Rhoda.” She then patted my arm. “Not a criticism, just a thought.”

  I pointed out that every so often I also see my sister Jo, and the people who buy harps.

  She glanced over at my notice board. “But that’s not exactly a huge variety of people. And you do need variety, Dan; it’s the spice of life. Don’t you long for a bit of spice sometimes?”

  I had to think about this.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “As your leg’s so bad and you can’t get out much at the moment, I’ll take you into Minehead or Lynmouth to see a show or something.”

  I said no thanks.

  “OK, then, how about somewhere different in the countryside? I could drive you up one of the moorland roads. I’m sure you wouldn’t regret it.”

  I told her I almost certainly would regret it, as new things never feel right to me, especially en masse. They make me short of breath. A long time later they might begin to be right, but by then they are not new things anymore, they are old things.

  She sighed deeply. “You have a lovely life, Dan, but it’s not real.”

  How is my life not real? To me it is very real. I didn’t say this, though. I looked at her shoes, which had a small shred of mud on the toe, and her socks, which were olive green. It occurred to me that maybe Ellie thought I was boring. I didn’t want her to think this.

  “Dan,” she said, stirring to action. “I’m insisting. We’ll just go for a short drive. You need to get out.”

  She helped me to my feet. We walked outside together and she put my crutches in the back of her car. I got in. She was insisting, so what could I do? She got in too.

  I asked where we were going.

  “Not far. I want to show you the local church. It’s really pretty, with some gorgeous stained glass. Nobody will be there. It’s a lovely, peaceful place. I’m sure you’ll like it.”

  I watched the scenery sliding by. The hills were smooth and pale. The trees were bare and spindly. The bracken was ragged, nice, brown and orange. The sky was blue with little bunches of gray and white cloud.

  We drove past a farm and through a cluster of cottages, then she pulled in at a lay-by beside a mossy lych-gate.

  “The ground is quite level here. Do you think you could manage without your crutches if I help support you?” she asked.

  I tried it and found that I could, provided she took my arm and I leaned on her a bit. I leaned on her possibly a bit more than I really needed to. She leaned back into me. We went through the lych-gate in this fashion. Ahead of us was a sandy path and at the end of it a small white church was peeping out from behind some holly bushes. Ellie was right, it did look pretty.

  Just as we were getting to the church door it opened and a woman came out. She was gray-haired and wore a hat that, like herself, was small and pot shaped. She was carrying a watering can and pruning shears. Ellie let go of me very quickly. She then grabbed me again as I started to topple sideways.

  “Hello, Ellie!” said the woman in a voice curling with questions.

  “Hello, Pauline,” said Ellie. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve just finished arranging the church flowers. I’m on the roster, didn’t you know? What are you doing here?”

  Her look went from Ellie to me, from me to Ellie.

  Ellie’s face had turned a strange shade midway between crimson and beetroot. “I was . . . we were just coming to look at the church. This is my friend Dan. He’s injured his leg, so I have to support him. Dan, this is my next-door neighbor, Pauline.”

  I said hello and so did she.

  “Are you local, Dan?” she asked.

  I said I was.

  “And how do you two know each other?”

  I was about to tell her that Ellie had visited the Harp Barn one day and I’d given her a harp, and she was now always coming up there to play it, and that she had rescued me and my pheasant from the hospital after we’d been shot, and she helped change my bandages for me every day, but Ellie cut in.

  “Dan’s a friend of a friend,” she said.

  I tried to think whether this was true or not. As far as I could see it wasn’t. But before I could say anything else she had pulled me into the church, calling, “’Bye, Pauline,” over her shoulder.

  It was an ancient church with fine woodwork and a very pleasing stone font. The windows showed saints and birds and fish, all with similar vacuous expressions on their faces. I looked at their faces for a long time. Seldom have I seen such complete and utter vacuousness. But the colors were good. Amber and sapphire blue and sea greens. Sunlight shone through the stained glass and made glowing patterns on the floor, and glowing patterns are something I like very much. I was glad I’d come after all. But Ellie was not as enthusiastic as she had been earlier.

  | 18 |

  Ellie

  She welcomes me to her lounge, a large, square room, tastefully color coordinated in blue and gold. Her three harps stand majestically side by side in the center of everything.

  The lesson always follows a similar format. Rhoda demonstrates something on the l
argest of the harps and I try to copy it. The harp I use is similar to my own, but it’s made of beech wood and boasts a set of forty-two strings. It was made by Dan some years ago and she tells me the sound has changed and mellowed over time.

  Rhoda gives me a cup of tea. I plant it on the floor by my feet and settle behind the harp. Today’s issue is the problem I keep having with my left hand. It can’t seem to stick to the correct rhythm, either lagging behind or leaping just ahead of the beat. Rhoda takes me through some exercises.

  “See if you can get this bass pattern under your fingers,” she suggests, zigzagging up and down the strings to a jaunty rhythm.

  I try to imitate. It sounds quite effective, but I’m getting some of the notes mixed up.

  “No, your index finger goes here. Do you see how it’s based around the D minor and C chords? Once you’ve got it, you can improvise over the top, like this.”

  She adds her right hand, playing it much faster to create a sparkling cascade of sound. Her hair hangs down in golden waves and she rocks backward and forward fractionally to the rhythm of the music. Mesmerizing. For both the eyes and ears. I wish—I can’t help wishing—she wasn’t Dan’s girlfriend.

  Her phone bleeps at us just as she approaches the climax. She stops dead.

  “Sorry, do you mind if I take this?”

  “Go ahead!” I prepare myself for a long wait.

  Rhoda’s harp lessons are disjointed because of the number of phone calls she gets. Sometimes she switches them off and sometimes she whisks away into the next room to answer. The door between the two rooms has a habit of drifting back open once it’s closed, so I get to hear bits and pieces of her conversations.

  There seems to be a large fan club. She plays in a duo with a guitarist and a lot of the calls are from him. I’ve never met him, but it seems he’s besotted with her. I bet she relishes the fact. Whenever it’s him on the phone she puts on a sugary, simpering voice and plays with her hair. I’ve been the unwilling witness to various flirtatious fragments of conversation. It makes me cross and bothered on Dan’s behalf.

  “Keep practicing that left hand,” Rhoda instructs me as she hurries into the other room. I hear a “Hi, Mum” as she pushes the door closed behind her. This will be one of the less interesting conversations. I pick at the harp quietly.

  The door is slowly performing its reopening trick. It makes eavesdropping not only easy but almost compulsory.

  “No, Mum,” she’s saying. “We’ve been through all this before! . . . I feel strongly about it. I don’t care if he’s asking questions. You’ll just have to change the subject. I really, really don’t want him to know!”

  The mother says something and then Rhoda replies: “That may well be the case, but I’m simply not prepared to deal with it at the moment. He’s not ready, I’m not ready! I’ve got my career to think of and that comes first.”

  A short answer.

  “No, I didn’t mean more important than him, of course not! Just more important than him having to know.”

  A longer answer.

  “You said before you were more than happy to do it. Are you changing your mind?”

  Something else from the mother.

  “No! Bad idea! And yes, of course it would be traumatic. He’s happy as he is. You’d only upset the apple cart. Next he’d insist on being introduced to his father and I don’t want that. There’d be no end of repercussions. It would be a nightmare trying to handle it all.”

  I sit up straight. His father. Whose father? Who are they talking about? A suspicion launches itself straight into my guts. I strain my ears, but at this point she lowers her voice even more and I can’t catch anything else.

  It’s impossible to halt the swift course of my imagination, though. It’s bounding ahead and assuming things. I just can’t stop it. I pluck harp strings in a desultory fashion, thinking, thinking. Then I hear Rhoda speaking, slightly louder again:

  “Anyway, just don’t say anything yet, Mum, I beg you! We’ll talk more later. I can’t now, I’m in the middle of a lesson. I’ll call this afternoon.”

  She comes back into the room looking peeved and pouty. She seems distracted for the rest of the lesson, I would almost say impatient to get rid of me.

  * * *

  • • •

  The garden looks as bedraggled as I feel. At least it’s quiet. I start cutting back the dead flowers in the border. A damp, brown heap gathers in the bottom of the wheelbarrow. I keep wondering about Rhoda, wondering if I can be right, telling myself it’s none of my business and trying to focus on something else. Then I start wondering again. It’s driving me insane.

  Pauline looks over the fence and hails me.

  “Ellie, you haven’t been up the hill today on your usual jaunt.”

  She’s an awful curtain-twitcher.

  “No,” I explain. “Clive is off work, suffering from a bad head cold. I’m sticking around to look after him.”

  I haven’t made it up to the barn yet today. I can’t put it off much longer. Dan will be wondering what’s happened to me, and those dressings won’t change themselves.

  Pauline waves her trowel in the direction of the Harp Barn. “Where is it you go so often anyway?”

  I see straight into her thoughts. She’s remembering how close Dan and I were when she saw us at the church the other day. Her gossipmongering mind is fast putting two and two together and making five hundred.

  I try to smile. “Oh, just, you know, walking.”

  “You’re very keen,” she comments wryly, a gleam in her gray eyes. “Bad weather never seems to put you off. I saw you go out the other day and it was coming down in buckets!”

  “Well, I enjoy the exercise,” I answer, squirming inwardly at my lies. “Anyway, better get in now and see if Clive’s OK.”

  I practically run inside to escape from her.

  “Is that you, back in, hon-bun?” Clive’s voice calls from the sitting room.

  “Yes, it’s me, of course. Feeling any better?”

  “Not really.”

  “Another lemon?”

  “Well, if you don’t mind . . .”

  I put the kettle on and fish a lemon out of the fridge, squeeze it and add a spoonful of honey. I’m exhausted.

  I take the steaming mug into the sitting room. Clive is lounging on the sofa. As I present him with his drink, he takes my hand. He raises it to his face and rubs his cheek against it. “Mm-mm, your skin’s nice and soft. But you’ve cut your nails short. Why did you do that?”

  I’m blushing again. I wish that didn’t keep happening.

  “I just thought I’d try a new look.”

  “Since when have you cared about your look?”

  “Well, long nails aren’t exactly practical for gardening and stuff, are they?”

  He sniggers. “Gardening? What is it about gardening all of a sudden? I thought you’d forgotten the meaning of the word!”

  I glance out the window. My attempts with the border are pathetic. Brambles are sprouting up everywhere and there’s still a forest of decaying brown stalks demanding attention. “Well, I’ll do some more tomorrow.” I hope that, if I do, Pauline won’t be around again.

  Clive coughs. The TV is still on with the sound turned low, but Bristol City aren’t doing well today. He takes a noisy slurp of lemon. “How’s the poetry going, hon? Written anything recently?”

  The last poem I wrote was a love song to my harp. Thankfully Clive never asks to read my poems. “I’ve been dabbling,” I answer. “This and that, you know. Nothing worth writing home about, but it’s always fun fiddling about with words. I find it therapeutic and—”

  “You complete stupid, sodding cretin!” Clive shouts. Not at me, at the television. The shooter has just missed a crucial goal.

  I consult my watch. “Clive, I’m just popping out to see i
f Christina’s OK.”

  “What, now?”

  “Yes. It’s really hard for her trying to use her left hand for everything and she’s still in loads of pain.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed I’m not exactly a hundred percent myself.”

  “I know, hon, I know. I won’t be gone for long.”

  “Why does it always have to be you playing Florence bloody Nightingale? Where’s that sodding son of hers when he’s needed?”

  “Clive, he can hardly come up all the way from Exeter every time she needs a hand!”

  “I thought he was always coming back to see her, bringing a ton of dirty laundry with him.”

  “Well, she did say that, yes, but that was a while ago and things have changed. He’s getting more and more involved in uni life now.”

  “Don’t go, El. Christina can cope. It’s only a cut, for Christ’s sake!”

  I wish I’d given Christina a more serious injury.

  “I’ve just got this feeling she needs me. I’ll be back soon.”

  Clive glares at me. “I don’t know what’s got into you recently, El. You never used to be like this. One minute you’re all ditzy and dreamy, the next you’re stubborn as a mule.” His voice is getting louder and louder. The conversation is going to erupt into a full-scale row if I’m not careful.